Optional Sub Fee

[Brandon Uzumaki.1524]

I wouldn't mind, but not like this, the point of having a optional sub-fee would be to have less stuff in the gem store, not more, locking earnable skins to the sub-fee would have the same effect, so they would need to put something else to atract people to that.

But i believe at this point this is not possible, you either start with a forced sub and convert to optional later (i think ESO did this), or already start with a forced or optinal sub, putting a sub in a game that never had one, even if optional, will turn a lot of people of, maybe in GW3 xD.

[Southerncarl.2740]

2 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Subscription isnt really about the price.

Its about the fear of missing out on the value by not logging on all the time and the fear of being cut off from that value if you want to stop. 

Subscription is preying on your basic human emotions.

I reject that.

 

Doesn't the store already prey on fomo though by having sales and items only available on the store for a certain amount of time. It's done to create artificial scarcity so people feel the need to buy it before it disappears. Preying on basic human emotions is already a part of the game.

[Southerncarl.2740]

6 minutes ago, Brandon Uzumaki.1524 said:

I wouldn't mind, but not like this, the point of having a optional sub-fee would be to have less stuff in the gem store, not more, locking earnable skins to the sub-fee would have the same effect, so they would need to put something else to atract people to that.

But i believe at this point this is not possible, you either start with a forced sub and convert to optional later (i think ESO did this), or already start with a forced or optinal sub, putting a sub in a game that never had one, even if optional, will turn a lot of people of, maybe in GW3 xD.

No items would be locked behind the sub. Everything would still available on the store as is now apart from with the sub it drops in the game. I guess another advantage of this that might persuade people to sub is that the skin could be achieved any time aslong as you do the content rather than waiting for the next cycle for it to be available on the store again. 

[costepj.5120]

What happen when you stop your optional sub? I assume all those items would get stripped from your wardrobe/inventory. That's not going to be popular! 

Edited September 7, 2022 by costepj.5120

[kharmin.7683]

34 minutes ago, Southerncarl.2740 said:

It just means as a sub player you can unlock more of the skins faster but you are tied into a sub to use them.

You can unlock them faster right now by swiping a credit card and they would have unlimited use.  No subscription required.

[Veprovina.4876]

1 hour ago, Southerncarl.2740 said:

You could unlock a lot of skins in 1 month but an easy fix is make it so if you unsub the skins you got aren't useable so its a balance between having access to a lot of skins that are unlockable quickly but paying to stay subbed or doing it the way it is now which is a slower grind of converting gold to gems or real world money(fast way) but you get to use the skins without being subbed.

So first of all, you want to impose a subscription fee on everyone that's "optional but not really" just so you can feel immersed in your what is essentially a gemstore purchase. Then, not only am i paying to work, i'm also paying to keep using the skins i worked for?

Sorry but...

Extremely bad idea.

[Dawdler.8521]

6 minutes ago, Southerncarl.2740 said:

Doesn't the store already prey on fomo though by having sales and items only available on the store for a certain amount of time. It's done to create artificial scarcity so people feel the need to buy it before it disappears. Preying on basic human emotions is already a part of the game.

It does.

Does it also make you unable to logon if you dont pay for a new fancy new skyscale mount skin before the last day of the month?

We are either talking subscription or just buying a set amount of gems every month. That last part isnt subscription. Its just buying gems. You can already do that at will, its optional.

[Southerncarl.2740]

3 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

You can unlock them faster right now by swiping a credit card and they would have unlimited use.  No subscription required.

 

I can't imagine how much you would have to spend to unlock all the skins on the cash shops obviously it's in the thousands of dollars. The sub is a better value for money option if you want to be a completist and unlock all the skins. Also some people like to play the game and not just buy all the content with a credit card.

[Freya.9075]

So. Since you’re mentioning completists. What about ingame skins? Collections, legendaries, drops. Do they come with the subscription as well? Cause you know completists will not feel it’s complete without them. 

[Brandon Uzumaki.1524]

Battle pass is something that could happen, provided they use the "ones" already in game, GW2 already has the best Battle Pass system ever created (along with Deep Rock Galatic), yes, i'm talking about the reward track system, it's a "Battle Pass" of sorts, but non predatory, and zero FOMO, they just need to convert this system to PvE.

Can be a update to the "Spirit Shard track" we have currently, so now you have more options after you level all your masteries, the Spiritd Shard track, dungeon tracks, map specific tracks (xpack, living world, core tyria, etc), even fractals, strikes and raid tracks.

Of course in PvE they need to be more "grindy", normal reward tracks require what, 20k xp, you get that in one normal event or hearth quest, so the PvE ones would need at least a few million XP per track to complete, maybe 5 million or more, like the higher level masteries.

But this could be another topic on it's own lol.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Brandon Uzumaki.1524

[Linken.6345]

3 minutes ago, Brandon Uzumaki.1524 said:

Battle pass is something that could happen, provided they use the "ones" already in game, GW2 already has the best Battle Pass system ever created (along with Deep Rock Galatic), yes, i'm talking about the reward track system, it's a "Battle Pass" of sorts, but non predatory, and zero FOMO, they just need to convert this system to PvE.

Can be a update to the "Spirit Shard track" we have currently, so now you have more options after you level all your masteries, the Spiritd Shard track, dungeon tracks, map specific tracks (xpack, living world, core tyria, etc), even fractals, strikes and raid tracks.

Of course in PvE they need to be more "grindy", normal reward tracks require what, 20k xp, you get that in one normal event or hearth quest, so the PvE ones would need at least a few million XP per track to complete, maybe 5 million or more, like the higher level masteries.

But this could be another topic on it's own lol.

Yes and enemies need their drop tables adjusted to not just over inflate the already profitable pve areas with another reward track tack on top of what we already have.

[Southerncarl.2740]

7 minutes ago, Freya.9075 said:

So. Since you’re mentioning completists. What about ingame skins? Collections, legendaries, drops. Do they come with the subscription as well? Cause you know completists will not feel it’s complete without them. 

 

Only difference is with the sub all gem store skins will be available through in game drops. All the other stuff ingame skins, collections and legendaries are still in the game you still have to do the content to get them same as you do now. It's literally just making the cash shop skins available in game that's it.

[kharmin.7683]

32 minutes ago, Southerncarl.2740 said:

 

I can't imagine how much you would have to spend to unlock all the skins on the cash shops obviously it's in the thousands of dollars. The sub is a better value for money option if you want to be a completist and unlock all the skins. Also some people like to play the game and not just buy all the content with a credit card.

But one doesn't need to buy all of the content at one time.  Heck, one probably doesn't need to buy all of the content overall.

What is missing from your proposal is how would an optional sub fee profit Anet?  You would need evidence to show that it would be a sound, profitable business decision for them.  Do you really think that they haven't considered this and crunched the numbers and found it to be less than favorable?  If they could make more money, don't you think that they wouldn't have already implemented this type of solution?

[Freya.9075]

14 minutes ago, Southerncarl.2740 said:

 

Only difference is with the sub all gem store skins will be available through in game drops. All the other stuff ingame skins, collections and legendaries are still in the game you still have to do the content to get them same as you do now. It's literally just making the cash shop skins available in game that's it.

They already are through farming gold. 

[Gibson.4036]

So lets say somehow this makes financial sense for ArenaNet. Somehow there are enough people who will pay a sub that costs as much as buying all the new cash shop items released in a month, plus the extra work-time put into setting up the drops. I can't imagine how, but for the sake of discussion.

With a sub, you get whatever they drop that month. You have no feedback mechanism other than dropping your sub. So if ArenaNet, hypothetically of course, decided to only add a jade bot skin you'll rarely see as your drop for the month, you're stuck with it. If you don't like it enough, you can unsub and not get future drops.

Wihout the sub, if Arenanet, hypothetically, offers a jade bot skin you'll rarely see for the exhorbitant cost of almost a premium mount skin, or the cost of two whole character slots, you just ignore it. ArenaNet learns right away that it was a mistake, and decides to make the next jade bot skin a BL chest drop.

There's a reason software companies have gone sub in recent years. It means you can't just pass on the recent update that may not add any features you want or need, but you just accept it and pay them anyway. Subscriptions are not there for the consumer, they're a way to guarantee income for a company.

[Ashen.2907]

So $150 per month or so?

[The Greyhawk.9107]

I'd quit if they did implement this.

[DeanBB.4268]

If Anet is currently selling single items for $15-$20 in the gem store, why would they ever want to offer a subscription ($15 is typical?) and give away a great many items? How does this make sense for them?

[DarcShriek.5829]

Every proposal for optional subs that I've ever seen on this forum all boil down to the same thing.  The poster just wants a discount on  his purchases.  They all know that Anet has a gem store and that they can buy gems every month if they want.  They just want a discount for buying gems monthly.

[Gehenna.3625]

I am used to paying a sub for MMOs, so personally I'm not against paying a sub as such. However, this game will lose a lot of players if it did get a sub suddenly.

Also, I think that paying a sub should relate to the game content and not gem store items. Since the game content is already there and expansions are few and far between, I really don't see how a sub could be useful here. As the poster above, these sub proposals are just attempts at discounts for the gemstore. That also would not be useful for Anet. If you want a discount...wait for the times that Anet gives 20% off for gems and stock up on gems then. Alternatively, make gold in game and buy gems with that gold.

All in all a sub wouldn't serve a real purpose that would benefit Anet.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Gehenna.3625

[god fragment.5716]

So in practice this would mean: subscribe for a month, farm up the skins you want, spend the rest of the month farming as many skins as you can, then unsubscribe. 

[Khisanth.2948]

Also under such a scheme it is almost guaranteed that as soon as you stop paying for the subscription anything unlocked that way will become locked. Your optional subscription is now mandatory. This is just how businesses operate.

[Khisanth.2948]

3 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

What happens when someone pays the sub fee, then finds out a skin they want comes from something they don't want to do, or physically cannot do? Are they just out of luck, or as a paying customer should they expect Anet to tailor the service they're paying for to their needs?

The second one sounds impractical for Anet (and would be open to abuse, it would be too easy for someone to claim they can only complete the simplest parts of the game, get all the rewards stacked in there and then quickly grind it) but the first one sounds like an almost guaranteed bad deal for players, because unless you're ok with doing literally everything in the game including placing in PvP tournaments, completing WvW skirmish rewards, completing all the story instances and extra achievements and so on there's going to be something you cannot or do not want to do, and then you're effectively paying for rewards you cannot access.
 

I was thinking that as well. If it's literally just you pay for subscription time and while it's active everything in the gem store is moved to in-game rewards it would be very, very easy to exploit (except for the limitations I mentioned above).

A lot of players could probably work their way through every jumping puzzle, dungeon, Fractal, world boss etc. within 1 month, then they've got everything currently available and can cancel their subscription until it's all updated with new items.

If they time-gated it so you can only get a few items per month that becomes a lot less appealing to players, especially if you can just buy the same items directly using the same money you'd use to pay for a subscription.
 

So you're paying the same money other people pay to buy these items, but you have to go through a whole process to unlock them and then only get to rent them for as long as you keep on paying? That sounds like a lot of downsides for players with no benefits to balance it out.

At first glance it doesn't sound as terrible as the "optional" subscription threads we normally get (which are usually either just an overly complicated way to buy gems or asking for absurd advantages over non-subscribers), but I'm not convinced there's a way to do it which is fair to both players and Anet.

If we reduce things to the essentials and assume OP is actually being honest the entire idea can be reduced to "every gem store item should come with a quest to obtain the item in game". A major issue is that because it requires more effort to obtain players will expect a cheaper price but for ANet it requires more work. Since ANet is the one making the decisions it means the final product will both cost more and require more effort to obtain. Observers will wonder what kind of fool made the decisions to allow such a product to be released.

[Tiamat.8254]

I would quit.

[Sobx.1758]

5 hours ago, Southerncarl.2740 said:

Why not?

Because you're proposing for the devs to blindly add a huge amount of quests/collections/missions and then count that enough people will suddenly want to start paying monthly subscription in order for it to be actually worth the time. Meanwhile people can already grind gold and turn it into gems. Or use that optional sub money to just load up on gems. Seems mostly like an unrealistic approach to me.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Sobx.1758