Optional Sub Fee

[Veprovina.4876]

1 hour ago, The Greyhawk.9107 said:

I'd quit if they did implement this.

 

11 minutes ago, Tiamat.8254 said:

I would quit.

A lot of people would...

[Farohna.6247]

This just sounds...messy.  It I wanted to pay for DLC, then I will pay for DLC, not for obtaining a skin that I just paid for by going and doing a heart or story or boss or achievement.  I find it highly unappealing.  It's like buying a steak dinner at a restaurant but having to go chase down the cow.  

While I know this is an optional idea, how long would it be before exclusives were added just for those with a subscription?  People already complain enough that "the pretty skins" are only on the gem store.   I would prefer to just buy some gems or exchange my gold occasionally instead.

[Farohna.6247]

Double post.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Farohna.6247

[Diak Atoli.2085]

No.

[Zaret.1450]

6 hours ago, Southerncarl.2740 said:

Would people be happy to have an optional monthly sub fee for players that would like to unlock store items within the world of the game and not purchase from the cash shop(using either real money or transferring gold to gems)

With the Sub fee it would mean all the purely cosmetic gem store items (weapon skins, mount skins etc) would be unlockable in the game world from doing things like quests, dungeons, completing world bosses, completing story chapters, zone completion, world events, completing jump puzzles etc. An example would be if you completed a certain jump puzzle you would get a mount skin as a reward or a glider skin that would usually be on the store for non subbed players. It wouldn't be rng like the wow loot system it would just mean specific quests or things to be done in the game would drop specific rewards that are usually on the store.

For players that didn't want to sub the game would stay exactly as it is now and they can attain the items by transferring gold to gems or using real money to buy it. Purely an optional sub fee would people be ok with this and would you use it?

The idea itself isnt bad, but i think it isnt realistic, first of all lets put an example.

Imagine a battle pass or fee of, say, 20€.

Now i dont realy put much money in the game so i dont know how many gems it could be but say its 2k for example, to make the battle pass worth it youd need to give access to skins /utilities with a higher value, but the way skins and, say, bank slots work, is more of a, buy it, then you have it and no more need to worry about it, while a battle pass could work it would have problems that ill mention later. But a monthly sub would mean youd only have things as long as you keep paying, so youll end up paying much more than the true value os the things, and if that sub gave you permanent things well many people would probably choose to just get the things they want, need or in case of veterans things they still dont have, wich in some cases would be just the newest things as some people have 10 years of playing here, to sum it up, it would be troublesome.

as for a battle pass, youll get things by doing dungeons and stuff true, but right now you can get things by either paying directly, or converting gold to gems, wich also implies playing the game, and as i see, the gold conversion is a more relaxed play to get gems, as oposite to something like, pay and then play to get something.

 

What the game realy needs is much more propaganda and to exploit things it already has, strikes fractals, wvw, pvp, if the game itself made streams with competitions, like a pvp competition like some streamers do, beetle races, have devs run around showing wvw fights and guild fights, the streamers do it and its awesome, but anet itself should make use of this and make more anouncements, propaganda and make the game more known, gw2 is famous in mmo circles for its mounts but do people know how beetles and griffons can do races and amazing things? wvw is great and theyre making aliances, so what better time to make streams of wvw with big clans and show it?

I say this because the gem store is, in my opinion, perfect as it is, and there are other ways to get the game to make money.

[Danikat.8537]

2 hours ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

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.

They have made gem store items which include a short scavenger hunt resulting in an additional item before, and they cost about the same as equivalent items without the extras. The ones I remember are the Mini Angry Chest which allowed you to unlock the Mini Red Spark and the Mini Angry Wintersday Gift which unlocked the Ugly Wool Glider.

That's not quite the same as the OP's suggestion, because it's still a single-purchase item rather than a subscription, but it shows they are willing to sell things which require some effort from players to fully unlock.

I still don't think it's likely they'll create any form of subscription, especially not one which locks you out of things you've earned if you stop paying, but gem store purchases with 'quests' associated with them aren't out of the question.

[Khisanth.2948]

1 minute ago, Danikat.8537 said:

They have made gem store items which include a short scavenger hunt resulting in an additional item before, and they cost about the same as equivalent items without the extras. The ones I remember are the Mini Angry Chest which allowed you to unlock the Mini Red Spark and the Mini Angry Wintersday Gift which unlocked the Ugly Wool Glider.

That's not quite the same as the OP's suggestion, because it's still a single-purchase item rather than a subscription, but it shows they are willing to sell things which require some effort from players to fully unlock.

I still don't think it's likely they'll create any form of subscription, especially not one which locks you out of things you've earned if you stop paying, but gem store purchases with 'quests' associated with them aren't out of the question.

There are no alternatives in those examples.

To be equivalent there needs to be the option either pay for the Mini/Glider directly or pay and have to do the quest. Both rewards also look like simple reskin which is also not comparable to applying to everything in the gemstore.

[Celthon.6284]

8 hours ago, Southerncarl.2740 said:

Would people be happy to have an optional monthly sub fee for players that would like to unlock store items within the world of the game and not purchase from the cash shop(using either real money or transferring gold to gems)

With the Sub fee it would mean all the purely cosmetic gem store items (weapon skins, mount skins etc) would be unlockable in the game world from doing things like quests, dungeons, completing world bosses, completing story chapters, zone completion, world events, completing jump puzzles etc. An example would be if you completed a certain jump puzzle you would get a mount skin as a reward or a glider skin that would usually be on the store for non subbed players. It wouldn't be rng like the wow loot system it would just mean specific quests or things to be done in the game would drop specific rewards that are usually on the store.

For players that didn't want to sub the game would stay exactly as it is now and they can attain the items by transferring gold to gems or using real money to buy it. Purely an optional sub fee would people be ok with this and would you use it?

NO...just NO!

 

If you, or anyone else, feels need to pay monthly 'fee/subscription' to play the game then just spend that amount each month in the game's gem store.  If you think a subscription should be, for example, $15USD/month...then feel free to spend that each month in the gem-store and achieve same thing.

 

This entire subject falls into category of "If it ain't broke don't 'fix' it".  Move on.

[Silent.6137]

I started playing GW2 after spending years on other MMOs. Always the same. It's either with subscriptions and yet slow updates/fixes, or F2P which are actually P2W. I eventually migrated to GW2 after so many people mentioning it from those games.

Breath of fresh air. No sub and no P2W (What I consider it to be. Don't care about any other definitions). And have been here ever since.

From all the posts, there's definitely an overwhelming opposition to the suggestion. I, for one would not support it since it'll add an extra distinction between players: subscribers and F2P-ers. I can just imagine the uproar over such an implementation from the community.

And imagine the rumors and speculations against ArenaNet.

Headlines: "ArenaNet in Dire Financial Troubles", "ArenaNet's F2P Model not Working. Is It On Life Support?", "F2P Can't Compete with A Subscribing Base: ArenaNet Caves In!", etc.

Edited September 8, 2022 by Silent.6137

[Tukaram.8256]

If I understand this correctly, the options would be:

1. Continue under the no sub plan and buy gems as desired to unlock the skins of my choosing.

2. Pay the optional sub fee to get the 'privilege' of earning the skins in game. 

Why would anyone pick the 2nd option?  If anything - why not just have a discounted recurring monthly charge for gems? That would be your optional sub fee, and path to skins.  It sounds like you are just looking for a discounted way to get skins to be honest.

[Labjax.2465]

The danger is, even if it's designed to be highly "optional" at the get-go, not only is it likely going to come with some pressures for you to sub, it would prob get worse in that way over time even if not that bad in the beginning. Much like how the cash shop went from things like 800 gems for a set of armor to something like 3 times that or more for a set of armor split up into pieces.

I don't trust them to reasonable about it, basically, nor any game studio with similar design at this point, for that matter.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

16 hours ago, zaswer.5246 said:

The idea itself isnt bad, but i think it isnt realistic, first of all lets put an example.

Imagine a battle pass or fee of, say, 20€.

Now i dont realy put much money in the game so i dont know how many gems it could be but say its 2k for example, to make the battle pass worth it youd need to give access to skins /utilities with a higher value, but the way skins and, say, bank slots work, is more of a, buy it, then you have it and no more need to worry about it, while a battle pass could work it would have problems that ill mention later. But a monthly sub would mean youd only have things as long as you keep paying, so youll end up paying much more than the true value os the things, and if that sub gave you permanent things well many people would probably choose to just get the things they want, need or in case of veterans things they still dont have, wich in some cases would be just the newest things as some people have 10 years of playing here, to sum it up, it would be troublesome.

as for a battle pass, youll get things by doing dungeons and stuff true, but right now you can get things by either paying directly, or converting gold to gems, wich also implies playing the game, and as i see, the gold conversion is a more relaxed play to get gems, as oposite to something like, pay and then play to get something.

 

What the game realy needs is much more propaganda and to exploit things it already has, strikes fractals, wvw, pvp, if the game itself made streams with competitions, like a pvp competition like some streamers do, beetle races, have devs run around showing wvw fights and guild fights, the streamers do it and its awesome, but anet itself should make use of this and make more anouncements, propaganda and make the game more known, gw2 is famous in mmo circles for its mounts but do people know how beetles and griffons can do races and amazing things? wvw is great and theyre making aliances, so what better time to make streams of wvw with big clans and show it?

I say this because the gem store is, in my opinion, perfect as it is, and there are other ways to get the game to make money.

For years, the Devs had weekly streams of WvW.  I don't know how much of a difference it made.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Also, OP has a lot of 'they just need to do this...or that', as if it would be easy to program.  Any item unlocked on the account can not be locked again.  The CS Team and Devs have told us this for years. If it was a matter of 'just', I'm sure it would have been changed years ago.

Thus, the suggestion would never work, because there is no way to keep players using the 'optional' subscription after unlocking all that they want at a much reduced price.

[vanfrano.1325]

I like the way things are, if and when I'm satisfied I try to buy some QoL for around 15€ each month which is about what I used to pay for FFXI. Since EoD's release I haven't been satisfied with what they deliver so I stopped, for now.

I'm also not sure they would come up with a fair sub system and actually put the profits back into the game. It'll probably quickly become not optional.

I think we have one of the best systems here, as someone who likes to actually play the game for my gold. Now if they added more unique and cool rewards for playing the game and not swiping your credit card it would be even better.

I will never ever pay for a mount or a skin in the gem store, even with gold to gem conversion. But if they added some, ideally exclusive, to the game that would drastically increase my engagement with the game even though I don't care about skins. I do care about completion though. I don't think these things are mutually exclusive, people who don't mind swiping will do it anyway.

Edited September 8, 2022 by vanfrano.1325
typo

[disco.9302]

On 9/7/2022 at 12:38 PM, Southerncarl.2740 said:

Would people be happy to have an optional monthly sub fee for players that would like to unlock store items within the world of the game and not purchase from the cash shop(using either real money or transferring gold to gems)

With the Sub fee it would mean all the purely cosmetic gem store items (weapon skins, mount skins etc) would be unlockable in the game world from doing things like quests, dungeons, completing world bosses, completing story chapters, zone completion, world events, completing jump puzzles etc. An example would be if you completed a certain jump puzzle you would get a mount skin as a reward or a glider skin that would usually be on the store for non subbed players. It wouldn't be rng like the wow loot system it would just mean specific quests or things to be done in the game would drop specific rewards that are usually on the store.

For players that didn't want to sub the game would stay exactly as it is now and they can attain the items by transferring gold to gems or using real money to buy it. Purely an optional sub fee would people be ok with this and would you use it?

there are two possibilities from this.

1 - the rewards would be poor (worse than just buying straight with gems) and the sub system would be seen as a scam.

2 - the rewards would be better from sub fee than just buying gems and there would be a huge backlash as the majority of the community is against sub fees and would see this as unfair. 

Sub fees are often a phycological trick to get players to commit and be rewarded for their "loyalty" and feel like they are missing out if they don't play enough.

 

Look for other topics regarding subs and you will see that many people have stayed with GW2 because it has no sub fee model. If it did, it would be competing with other MMOs more directly and ultimately lose some of the playerbase.

[Danikat.8537]

I think it's important to remember that Arenanet was created with the intention of making an MMO without a subscription fee - it's something they talked about right from the very beginning, possibly before the game even had a name.

On that basis I'm not sure they would change it even if it was universally proven that subscriptions are more profitable for companies, or that the income was significantly more reliable or whatever other benefits it's supposed to have for them. It would be like saying because there's market research that licenced football games are more profitable than RPGs then a company that has only ever made RPGs should switch to exclusively making licenced football games.

I know in theory a pure capitalist model says everyone will always do whatever is most profitable, but in practice it's almost never that simple. Especially because games and companies don't exist in isolation and even if their only priority is making as much money as possible it may be more effective to do that by making a unique product which attracts an otherwise underserved market than by trying to repeat what another company is already doing.