F2P Failure and Elite Dangerous

[Dalkeith]

I m actually with Kory on this as well. Especially for online games each one of us will be renting time on servers paid for by frontier. If we want games that last for decades and not years you will need to pay for that support.

Its probably not a coincidence that one of the most long lasting games EVE is subscription.

By all means get that cost as low as possible but 3 quid a month from 40k + users would really commit the company.

I think it is the only likely future for really deep virtual reality worlds. You literally pay for a vacation in a virtual world.

 

[Ushgarak]

Eve is another legacy game. Any game trying to do that today will fail. Mandatory subscriptions doom games.

 

[OillyRag]

Will you lot please stop trying to give away your money or at least give it to me if your looking for a worthy cause.

Frontier have made no announcement about any sort of revenue raising post release.

I have paid my money and if Frontier do in fact try to squeeze me for more via micro transactions or subscriptions I will, reluctantly, put elite away and move along.

And I would bet I wouldn't be the only one.

 

[Herik]

Eve is another legacy game. Any game trying to do that today will fail. Mandatory subscriptions doom games.

Ushgarak; I don't believe this!:S $10.00 (US) a month, for a virtual world in space and on planets is absolutely reasonable. We; (my wife and I) are retired and drawing social security. We'd pay this!.

 

[Riandor]

Will you lot please stop trying to give away your money or at least give it to me if your looking for a worthy cause.

Frontier have made no announcement about any sort of revenue raising post release.

I have paid my money and if Frontier do in fact try to squeeze me for more via micro transactions or subscriptions I will, reluctantly, put elite away and move along.

And I would bet I wouldn't be the only one.

Will likely follow suit...
ESO is having up to be a slightly better than average MMO, but **** me it's overpriced.

I'm not surprised by the loss posted by Coaster Crazy. It's not a bad little game to be fair, but I never felt the need to buy anything as I don't like that about mobile games and this one was almost too fair. Would almost have been better off costing a very small amount.

Most of the main revenue generators are quite fascist in getting you to part with cash. Dungeon Keeper being the latest offender.

As for Elite, I made my points in the MT thread, so shan't go I to repeat mode other than to say, I am not a fan of subscriptions.

 

[Dalkeith]

Does that mean planetside 2 is doomed?

 

[Dalkeith]

Ushgarak; I don't believe this!:S $10.00 (US) a month, for a virtual world in space and on planets is absolutely reasonable. We; (my wife and I) are retired and drawing social security. We'd pay this!.

Software companies have a crazy cash flow that's all I m saying its not surprising they try and get stability.

 

[Barns]

Subscriptions. I've said it once and I'll say it again. I know not everyone likes them. I don't think for a minute that everyone will even be happy if they exist even if they are an option. But there are plenty people (like me) who would most happily drop £8 - £12 a month if it meant we didn't have to worry about being nickle-and-dimed by MT in Elite Dangerous.

Offer six month and annual options and better yet. If it's good enough for The Elder Scrolls Online and Star Citizen to offer a subscription model (two very different models there, true, but both offer chance for regular flat-fee payments).

Please when replying, take on board the fact that I'm only ever suggesting subscriptions as one of many options to pay. If you don't like or want to pay by a subscription, you shouldn't be forced in to it. Never would I be foolhardy to suggest that they be the only means for Elite: Dangerous. It's not that kind of game, and has never been billed as such. But from Fdev's perspective, flexibilty is key, and knowing your market is important.

Absolutely. I'd pay a sub if it meant I got some small perks and access to anything that was otherwise on the cash shop (paint jobs or whatever).

Note to people fretting about Kroy's suggestion here - he says specifically that this would be an optional sub. Meaning you could play for free with microtransactions, just like the plan currently is. The sub would be another option for those who hate cash shops but are happy to pay a flat fee every month to get "everything".

 

[Barns]

Frontier have made no announcement about any sort of revenue raising post release

No official "here's what we're definitely doing" announcement, no, but it is very clear from everything they've said since during the KS campaign and after that microtransactions at least are very very likely to happen in some form. "Cash for credits" also looks quite possible, it was mentioned during the KS campaign as well. The chances of there being NO pay-for optional stuff once you've bought the game are pretty much zero, I'd say.

 

[kilvenny]

Lots of doom and gloom around here. F2P needs a hook, there needs to be a reason to invest. It has to make you desperate and the MT has to be compelling. Candy Crush does that for a lot of people. One more star and I can beat that level. Oh go on here's my credit card its only a quid.

I sat down and cranked a few numbers (old accounting habits die hard I am afraid). The whole key is units sold.
One hundred thousand seats is 3.5M sterling. Likelihood is half of those would take the downloads pack giving 5M. Once the main expansions are done and the development team scales back I cannot believe that half that wouldn't cover on going costs and provide some profit.

By this time several other revenue streams should be apparent

Multiplatform - I expect to see Elite on consoles
Merchandising - FD needs to look at games like Minecraft and Dota.
Cobra engine licensing - Once walking around is published the Cobra engine should be very marketable

So the crucial question is how many units and how quickly and will sales be sustained? In my view how FD handle the walking around expansion will be the key. If its immersive and expansive offering FPS style action with multiplayer missions my view is this game could take off. It's also important that FD look beyond walking around for something(s) else that adds a new dimension so that the game is seen to be evolving. eg Space station designer. You could sell the designer stand alone with one free space station and micro transaction if you want to build more than one. How many people would want to visit their space station(s)?

I struggle to believe with the niche/nostalgia and the uniqueness of this game that it wont top 500K seats worst case. I am expecting over a million and if FD can morph it into other genre's and onto consoles - the sky's the limit

 

[Barns]

In my view how FD handle the walking around expansion will be the key. If its immersive and expansive offering FPS style action with multiplayer missions my view is this game could take off.

Off topic but I really don't get why so many are excited in particular about getting an FPS in Elite. I mean, I come to play Elite because I want a game in space, about space, with spaceships. If I want an FPS then there are a gazillion games out there which will do FPS shootery action far better than anything FD are likely to cook up as a side expansion on a limited budget.

Why the FPS excitement? What is it that gets people hooked on the idea of walking around on their legs rather than flying a space ship across the galaxy... which is after all why we're here in Elite isn't it?

If we're thinking about which expansions are more exciting - planetary landings is FAR more Elite-y and interesting to me. And much more likely to stand out as something new and exciting to pull in new punters. Any Elite-FPS is bound struggle when compared FPS-feature-wise side-by-side against a dedicated FPS (at least to a naive observer / reviewer, not an Elite fan).

 

[Cody]

If we're thinking about which expansions are more exciting - planetary landings is FAR more Elite-y and interesting to me.

<nods in agreement>

 

[Ixnatifual]

Will you lot please stop trying to give away your money or at least give it to me if your looking for a worthy cause.

Frontier have made no announcement about any sort of revenue raising post release.

I have paid my money and if Frontier do in fact try to squeeze me for more via micro transactions or subscriptions I will, reluctantly, put elite away and move along.

And I would bet I wouldn't be the only one.

Well as long as I get the money when my computer is the one hosting the peer to peer session I'm OK with it! Running my PC isn't free, ya know!

 

[Ushgarak]

Ushgarak; I don't believe this!:S $10.00 (US) a month, for a virtual world in space and on planets is absolutely reasonable. We; (my wife and I) are retired and drawing social security. We'd pay this!.

I am sure you and a number of others will, and that is great- but not enough will, as several high-profile releases relying on mandatory subscriptions in recent times have shown. Subs evidently do not seem reasonable to a lot of people, myself included. Subscription model games are virtually dead.

Buy the box + expansions + cash shop is the way to go.

Cash shops are so lucrative if done right that no voluntary subscription is going to be allowed to just give you everything in it. Subs might give you a discount or a monthly free grab at things in the cash shop, but never the whole thing. Star Citizen's subscription has no proposal to give the subs anything from the cash shop in that game. TOR's subscription gives its players a monthly allowance of cash shop currency, but at a rate where they'd have to sub for over a decade to get everything that's in there. I'm afraid that if voluntary subs are ever considered, you'd have to rule out that implementation as it's just not the way it works. If you pay a voluntary sub, you do it in part for the perks (early news, testing rights and little perks like being able to visit the developer offices, as Star Citizen offers) and because you want to support the game on a regular basis. What it can't do is impinge on the important funding stream in the form of a cash shop.

 

[kilvenny]

@Barns
Just to clarify. From a personal perspective the FPS part is not what I am most interested in either. However if you look at what has been popular over the last five years or so its FPS. This thread was fundamentally about funding and if your business model is about selling licences (which FD's currently is) then you need mass market appeal and it would seem to me that the FPS add on offers that.

 

[Ixnatifual]

Buy the box + expansions + cash shop is the way to go.

Strongly disagree, unless the cash shop is only for vanity items. Comparing to a game like SWTOR is wrong because it has a completely different architecture as their servers have to handle all game logic. It's only reasonable to compare to other titles where the servers mainly track data and handle matchmaking. So games like Blood Bowl, Left 4 Dead 2, Diablo 3, StarCraft 2, Counterstrike and Battlefield 3. A game like SWTOR, EvE or World of Warcraft is a totally different beast as they require big server farms to host the game. This requires a lot of upkeep.

Alternatively each player could monthly be awarded a fee depending on how many game sessions he hosts during that month for the upkeep of his "server." Or we could just call it even after buying the game. One thing is certain - no way in Hell am I paying FD for hosting game sessions on my computer.

 

[Kroy]

Having dropped £100 in upfront costs on this game alone, I have no intention of either micro transactions, or a subscription fee...

Well, I suppose we'll all have single player offline when FDev finally pull the multiplayer server, and with it, we'll see the end of a living, breathing universe. I'd rather get a few years out of it before that happens.

R
And you're claiming that f2p would be bad? HA.

Do you even read? Seriously what is it with people and subscriptions. They see the word and they immediately think:

Mandatory subscriptions doom games.

At least Ushgarak to his credit goes on to give some very valid and pertinent points about an optional subscription model and how it might relate to either a) some vanity items or b) equivalent value in the cash shop.

I'd suggest that a subscription model could offer more than that, but much depends on how the MT process works in the first place. To which FDev have been massively quiet.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

I think FD could think about having some sort of optional subscription to additional service besides FD. Maybe access to mobile device with latest info about markets in ED? Local news for specific systems?

I don't know how much there's market for it, but that's one of few ideas which can be thrown around.

 

[OillyRag]

No official "here's what we're definitely doing" announcement, no, but it is very clear from everything they've said since during the KS campaign and after that microtransactions at least are very very likely to happen in some form. "Cash for credits" also looks quite possible, it was mentioned during the KS campaign as well. The chances of there being NO pay-for optional stuff once you've bought the game are pretty much zero, I'd say.

Could you reference where they mention "cash for credits" in the kickstarter for me please?
Or any other reference from Frontier of additional revenue streams for that matter ?

I genuinely cant see why some people are just assuming that we are going to have to pay extra on top of the games purchase price like as if it's a given, Its not.

some are citing server costs, this is a red herring.

Frontier have been very clever in the way the elite multi player persistent universe is set up and there will be minimum server load. have you guys heard of "bittorrent" it's a peer to peer protocol that moves terabyte after terabyte of data around the internet every second and there are no, I repeat no main servers doing it.
All the heavy lifting is done by the peers "us" The Elite persistent universe uses the same network protocol, and while i agree there are/will be servers holding it all together, there will simply not be the banks and banks of servers that some are envisioning.

Some are citing ongoing game development.
Will this not be covered by the cost of the expansions when they become available.

So for what other reason apart from a hard faced rip off.

In my opinion Frontier are 'hopefully' going to make a lot of money out of Elite and I really hope they don't start looking at the community as some sort of cash cow to be taken advantage of. I don't think so, we are dealing with David Braben not some faceless EA suit, but it is possible and I for one think we should guard against it rather than just shrug our shoulders and say OK fine pick my pockets

So no please, no micro transactions, cash for credits or subs

.

 

[KING5TON]

IMO subscriptions will kill this game.

It doesn't have what games like WOW and Eve have (an existing userbase from the times when subscriptions where accepted).

How many games have released over the last few years that started as subscription based and gone F2P?
All of them? Maybe.
Why is this? It's because the funding model is going the way of the dodo. Only reason WOW and Eve can continue is that they've got players heavily invested in the games that they can't/don't want to stop playing it.

End of the day, most people on these forums are hardcore Elite fans. If only a handful of us find subscriptions acceptable and the rest think it's a bad idea what do you think average Joe that FD will be courting on release will think? He doesn't have the emotional or financial investment we do.