I would play GW2 more if it was a subscription-based MMO. [MERGED]

[Teratus.2859]

Another one of these threads.. same arguments again.

Again we have to point out.

1. A subscription would NOT! guarantee all that money would be reinvested into the game, chances are a good portion of it would be blown on other projects and games NCSoft and Anet want to develop.. this has already happened with GW2 despite the lack of a Subfee and that money was ultimately wasted as all those projects were cancelled.

2. A subscription would NOT! guarantee that cosmetic items sold in the gemstore would become "earnable" in game rewards.
Pretty much every major MMO that has a subscription model still also features a cash shop, and some of them including the often praised WoW charge even MORE!! for their cash shop items than Gw2 does for their cosmetics.

3. A Subscription would guarantee that a massive number of current Gw2 players would quit the game.

4 A subscription would NOT! guarantee that a massive number of new players would come to Gw2 to replace the players they lost from adding the sub.

5. As proof that this model simply doesn't work well, almost every single MMO that started on the Subscription Model is now a dying/stagnating free2play MMO with exception to a very small few that have managed to be successful on it.
Some have survived through sheer dominance such as WoW, which is largely one reason why so many others have died in the first place.. complete inability to attract enough players to justify the game's existence and financial model.
And others recognised their impending doom if they continue to stay on the model and choose to kill the mandatory aspect in a desperate attempt to save their game and attract more players.. such as ESO.

The only thing you can Guarantee by adding a mandatory sub to Gw2 is that a significant amount of players will quit the game.
I speak as one of many who would, but not before I demanded financial compensation for all the money I've already invested into this game and it's expansions based on the promise that I would never be forced to pay a sub to play this game.

As has been said many many times by many many people, if you want to pay a sub for this game, just buy gems every month.
That's how you can support the game, by asking for a sub you're just forcing a financial obligation onto everyone else, some of which probably don't have the money to even do that.

I can speak from past experience there myself, several years back I was in a kitten financial situation where I could barely even afford to feed myself every week.
I had to walk to and from work every day and walk miles into town just to see my friends on the weekends because I could not afford to pay the pitiful price for a bus ticket and have enough for my daily meal.
Paying for a subscription fee at that time would have been impossible for me.
If I had to pay for Gw2 and wanted to play it.. i'd have literally had to go hungry for a few days a week to afford it.
Gw2 was a great source of comfort and entertainment for me during that low year of my life, and I only had that comfort because this game did not have a subfee.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Teratus.2859

[Teratus.2859]

1 hour ago, Daddy.8125 said:

 

The issue is 2 things. WoW isn't actually as big as some beleive. The game loses over 50% of its playerbase within the first 2 months of a expansion launch, it's statistically proven and shown. 

 

The game also loses 61% of its profit line after 2 months. People beleive WoW is alot larger then it is basically the majority of WoWs income is from the shop they rely on players buying tokens to pay for boosts in content, buying level boosts and effectively encouraging 6 month sub sales with mounts. 

 

The difference is, WoW can market a expansion properly and hype a audience into preordering. And once they've made their 4 million sales they don't give a kitten who sticks around because they fall back on the people buying tokens every week for boosts through content. 

 

If you think SL dropped under 2 million by month 2 of Shadowlands. Its likely under 1 million by now. 

 

FFXIV is ironically the game with over 20 million players. And I think they're striding to hit 30 million with endwalkers. Or that's the target atleast 

 

The second problem is. WoW CEOs take 200 million paychecks. Paying your higher ups that largely means the game has to over perform in sales pretty much 100%. 

 

Which does prove your point. FFXIV has 5 times the sub number of WoW and is no where near a top 10 highest earner. While WoW is. That gives you a inckling to exactly how hard their cash shop carries their game. 

 

FFXIV has multiple systems which kinda don't encourage p2w behaviour. Not being able to buy gold is a start. Ontop of this because everything's done on 1 char your not continuously paying out. 

 

If gw2 went sub based as u say it won't remove this problem. Gw2 would have to multiply several times over in popularity before it reached a point remotely to be able to live on only the sub cost. 

 

A optional sub would be nice for some benefits. Maybe access to all living world stories while subbed like ESO does for their DLCs. Maybe some gem currency per month some small goodies as a way to retain a permanant income layered ontop which seems worthwhile for invested players. 

 

But trying to shift into a sub2play model would kill gw2. The fanbase would disagree with the move.. you can't shift yourself in models that harshly without backlash.

I wasn't aware that WoW was carried so hard by it's shop.

Kinda proves my old opinion about Subfees just being pure greed lol
I've often wondered what WoW would be like if they just scrapped the mandatory subfee.
If what you say about the shop is true then I would expect the game would make a ton more money if they did make that change.

If the cash shop carries that hard then killing the sub would likely bring in tons of new players.. new players which would probably invest in the shop if they decided to stick around.

[Touchme.1097]

I have quitted WoW because it's a sub-based game where a substantial amount of players subscribed long enough to clear all the raid content and then they disappeared and the feeling you get when you are online everyday in a sub-based game is that in those months where almost half the active players stop playing because they didn't renew their subscriptions the servers get deserted.

I am happy with the current business model GW2 is using right now, they get a lot of money selling black lion keys, probably enough to keep GW2 running and the rest is extra. As others have replied to you, you have no guarantee that a more profitable business model would mean more money invested into GW2 as companies use money and resources to invest in other games.

 

TLTR: My answer is NO!

[Riaenvyr.2091]

58 minutes ago, alccode.1297 said:

You could turn it into a sub-based game yourself, e.g., limit yourself to $10/$15 monthly gem store purchases as part of your "monthly subscription". 

 

It's a bit inconsistent to say it's not good to buy things in game with real life money, yet be totally willing to spend real life money in order to basically just get those things anyway, just in a slightly different way.

This "make your own monthly sub" argument gets thrown around way too much, and is always aimed at the incorrect target, so let's break the issue down.

There's a myriad of tiny things going into a monetization system, the most of which involve taking as much money as possible from people for as little effort as possible. Which is true for capitalism as a whole, but let's focus on just this particular argument.

The first portion of a monthly sub is, as I've mentioned in a post before, a difference in design philosophy of F2P and sub-based games. (Strife has made a beautiful video regarding the debate, and, although he sounds rather bitter speaking of certain things, it illustrates the dichotomy very well.)

The F2P - free to play -> free to pay -> fee to pay - model's game design revolves around what can be seen in GW2 in certain areas, too: flashy rewards with a lot of visual noise that put the entirety of the rewards attainable in-game to shame (e.g. pretty much everything in the Gem Store compared to what can be earned for playing the game), inventing problems to sell the solution (e.g. the Build "Templates" fiasco), artificially prolonging the time for no real reason but to make them come back later, also known as time-gating (e.g. How To Wait For Your Skyscale)... as Strife puts it, a simple question of "Does the system favor the player, or the company?"
This practice is akin to a sculptress chopping off the head of her statues, so she can sell overpriced glue with them.
Usually not the artist's first choice.

To be fair, GW2 is leagues away from the worst offender in this regard, and even the worst things in Tyria are tears in the vast oceans of the majority of, say, Korean F2P games. But this game is still in essence a F2P game, which, unfortunately, necessitates the systems listed above.

The sub-based model, on the other hand, gets paid up front, meaning both that the developers have the funding to do their job already in hand, and that their goal isn't to water down the game so the suits can suck more money out of players, but to provide an actually worthwhile experience so the people come back for another month, so the rewards are put behind walls, yes, but walls that players can overcome without getting too frustrated, walls that incentive putting time and effort into breaking them down and reward the wall-breakers accordingly.
Don't get me wrong, it's still manipulation - the human pleasure systems are relatively simple to exploit once understood - but one that satisfies the player's long-term cravings as much as the immediate ones, leading to a much better player retention.

Both models still have to deal with the usual problems when it comes to projects meant to keep people interested for, preferably, their whole lives, which comes with their own myriad of tiny things, but these are the very basic ideas when it comes to this concept.

As for the customer perspective:
People play games for a plethora of reasons - most of which could be summed up as "entertainment", which isn't necessarily fun as in laughter or joy, but also the feeling of ceaseless wonder, nerve-wracking competition, and ability improvement, to name a few.
I haven't met a single person, however, who would play a game just to give away their money. Doesn't mean they don't exist, but even the "whales" are usually simply people looking for their particular itch to be scratched whose mental predispositions are being taken advantage of.

As the old wisdom goes, "it's not when you get there, it's always the climb".
Yes, when boiled down, it's all just a loop of "time spent -> reward", but the path to the reward is what's important to players of a game, because we're exactly that - PLAYERS - not warehouse keepers, not hoarders, not [Banker] NPCs. I mean, we are those things, too, duh, but even though it might feel good to open the equipment panel and take a moment to appreciate all the work put into that all-violet gear borders, I can't imagine anybody just logs in, does that, and after proper six hours of hard-earned, honest staring logs out.
The carrot at the end of the stick is nothing more than a goal to work towards, which could ultimately be completely useless, but it serves as a mark on the road traveled, both before and after reaching it.

Thus, the second part of the monthly sub proposition comes down to a player enjoying actually playing the game, with their mind set on a course. A reachable destination serves both as a guide, and a brief respite before setting for a new one.

Grinding gold, as universal as it is, most of the time devolves into a mindless autopilot mode, as Aodlop pointed out right at the start, because there's no challenge or wonder in such a thing. Sure, it's optimal, but not an engaging gameplay.

TL;DR:
F2P games suck from the ground up, because every design decision is based on how much money it'll make. Sub-based games have to keep players interested, so they're forced to refine their systems to keep people around.
No, there's still no hope of turning GW2 into a sub-based game by now, but this is a very basic explanation of how the sausage is made.
Doesn't mean F2P games can't be fun. Wouldn't be here in the first place if I didn't like Tyria, right.
Doesn't mean the sub-based ones are the end-all and be-all, either.
What it does mean is that the F2P model is murdering the artistic potential of any game it's a part of, and supporting it is reloading the guns for it.
That's why the unrestricted capitalism of the gaming industry is so hideously despicable, but... that is a topic for a different conversation.

[The Greyhawk.9107]

I wouldn't.  Easily the fastest and surest way of getting me to quit for good.

[XenesisII.1540]

9 hours ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

But a sub-based GW2 would mean that all the amazing mounts and sets that have been released over the years would be earnable in game, by completing achievements, dungeons, raids or PvP feats instead of...bought with real life money, or gold grinded by following a zerg of 40+ players circling on the same map for hours.

 

 

Heh even WoW which still charges a sub is selling mounts in store now.

So don't count on Anet not double dipping either if they had the choice.

[Teratus.2859]

30 minutes ago, Riaenvyr.2091 said:

What it does mean is that the F2P model is murdering the artistic potential of any game it's a part of, and supporting it is reloading the guns for it.
That's why the unrestricted capitalism of the gaming industry is so hideously despicable, but... that is a topic for a different conversation.

But Subscription MMO's do exactly that as well.
Wow may have the monopoly going for it and that game may be rolling in it's artistic potential but what about the hundreds of smaller MMO's that had their potential utterly snuffed out because they couldn't survive on the subfee system?.. largely because of games like WoW that horded all of the players and by extent the money in the market.

From where I stand games like WoW are a far, far better example of "unrestricted Capitalism" as you put it.. a single titan that dominates a market so hard that no competition can really exist in it.
And this isn't the result of WoW in this case simply being the best, the ultimate of MMO games that nothing can truly be better than, rather it comes from WoW being ultimately the first of it's kind to be highly successful in this way.

Another element that incentivises people to play WoW is the subscription itself, when you pay for timed access to something you tend to feel like that money is wasted when you are not using it.
Kinda like leaving your car running because you might feel like going for a drive later.
This is ultimately a double edged sword too as players who play something out of an obligation like that tend to end up getting very bored eventually and start to get sick of the game.. they're playing but not enjoying it antmore.
This is why breaks are such a good thing for games like MMO's but the sub can be punishing for this if you're recently renewed it and then decide you don't want to play for a few months.. money down the drain or you can just stick it out and keep playing when you really really don't want to.
The game can become an obligation under this model and that's just bad, bad for the player and bad for not just WoW but other games too as your time is being financially driven rather than freely given.

And this is all before other elements such as predatory cash shops etc come into the discussion.. which as myself and others have said already are far worse in a number of Subfee MMO's such as WoW than they are in Gw2 and some other f2p MMO's.
I would very much argue that mandatory sub games are most certainly worse offenders of greedy practices in that regard.

It can feel like a trap for some, and one that can leave an impact.
I wonder how many people who spent years in a game like WoW and eventually quit now feel a strong sense of aversion to get into another MMO out of fear they'll fall back into that trap.. I expect there are a good few of them out there.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Teratus.2859

[Zephire.8049]

No way would I play GW2 if it had a subscription and I outright refuse to pay a subscription for any game that also charges money for the box.

 

A subscription also doesn't guarantee that there wouldn't be a cash shop as both WoW and FF14 show. I'd be paying $32+ for a mount skin in WoW in addition to the $60 for each expansion and $20 every month for the subscription. At most I'd pay ~$30 for a premium skin in GW2 but more realistically half that for a mount select license, or free if I get lucky with a key. Sure WoW has mount skins in-game but if it has a 1% drop rate and you spend 20 hours trying to get it (with there being a chance someone else will ninja it unless you solo), it's not free—it cost you $20 for the month + 20 hours of your time.

 

FF14 is a bit more reasonable with single-player mount skins being as low as $12USD, though those are per character rather than account. Account-wide skins are $24USD. This is on top of a subscription.

 

Could there be more mount skins available through in-game methods? Absolutely! But a subscription would be no guarantee as the two largest subscription-based MMOs also have cash shops (which charge far more for skins) while it would alienate players.

[Mickey.4207]

They make more money from their buy to play model. Why the hell would they go backward and turn into a sub based MMO? Like why? What's the logic for them as a company in doing so.

[Riaenvyr.2091]

1 hour ago, Teratus.2859 said:

But Subscription MMO's do exactly that as well.

 

Technically speaking, every single influence other than imagination will be in some way limiting the potential, and even then it could be argued that imagination is a limit unto itself, because no person is currently capable of absolute knowledge.
But that's not the point.
The point is that the F2P model necessitates taking away content from players to monetize it. The subscription model doesn't.
This, again, doesn't mean Gamigo and GameForge don't exist, but the model itself isn't at fault, human greed is.


 

1 hour ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Wow may have the monopoly going for it and that game may be rolling in it's artistic potential but what about the hundreds of smaller MMO's that had their potential utterly snuffed out because they couldn't survive on the subfee system?.. largely because of games like WoW that horded all of the players and by extent the money in the market.

From where I stand games like WoW are a far, far better example of "unrestricted Capitalism" as you put it.. a single titan that dominates a market so hard that no competition can really exist in it.
And this isn't the result of WoW in this case simply being the best, the ultimate of MMO games that nothing can truly be better than, rather it comes from WoW being ultimately the first of it's kind to be highly successful in this way.
 

WoW is an interesting topic.
Warcraft is not just a game at this point. Never was to begin with, but during the MMORPG time, the ecosystem it'd spawned through cosplays, music, fan art, the overall passion for it... is much more vast than a simple game. This means people who never heard of the genre, or sometimes even of gaming, would still be able to tell you what WoW is. Not exactly to detail, of course, but just having an idea in their mind is an absurd thing for marketing.

You're also ignoring the fact that even WoW began with nothing. Sure, not literal nothing, because Blizzard were relatively well-known at Vanilla's launch already, but they made their mark upon the world with content that people couldn't get enough of. They still do, to a certain extent, because something lured the people in. And something made them stay.
They weren't putting knives to people's throats and forcing them to play.

And yet, as Daddy pointed out, WoW isn't as massive as it once was, and in recent expansions the novelty isn't able to carry the bulk of player interest. No clue how accurate the numbers are, but expac after expac the numbers went down from the ungodly heights of Wrath, briefly spiking with Legion, and now they're dying again.

Also, saying that WoW has been the first to be this successful is far from true. Before WoW, Ultima Online and EverQuest were astonishingly big for their time, since the world was much smaller back then, so to speak.
The world is also more than the west, and, say, Lineage and Lineage 2 were gargantuan in Asia.
 

 

2 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Another element that incentivises people to play WoW is the subscription itself, when you pay for timed access to something you tend to feel like that money is wasted when you are not using it.
Kinda like leaving your car running because you might feel like going for a drive later.
This is ultimately a double edged sword too as players who play something out of an obligation like that tend to end up getting very bored eventually and start to get sick of the game.. they're playing but not enjoying it antmore.
This is why breaks are such a good thing for games like MMO's but the sub can be punishing for this if you're recently renewed it and then decide you don't want to play for a few months.. money down the drain or you can just stick it out and keep playing when you really really don't want to.
The game can become an obligation under this model and that's just bad, bad for the player and bad for not just WoW but other games too as your time is being financially driven rather than freely given.

And this is all before other elements such as predatory cash shops etc come into the discussion.. which as myself and others have said already are far worse in a number of Subfee MMO's such as WoW than they are in Gw2 and some other f2p MMO's.
I would very much argue that mandatory sub games are most certainly worse offenders of greedy practices in that regard.
 

The sunken cost fallacy surfaces regardless of what has been invested. It could be money, like in Your example, but more often than not it's time people value and suffer through absurd things to not feel like they've wasted.
Not saying people don't want to get their money's worth, but time spent playing is as valuable a currency as cold, hard cash, and the F2P model is taking a grand advantage of it.
Thankfully, if ANet is good at something, it's pissing off the players who care for their game, so nobody ever had a hard time quitting GW2 😄

When it comes to predatory greed, You're disregarding basically everything I've said in my previous post. It was before the TL;DR mark, though, so, ah... mea culpa, I guess.
The difference between the F2P and sub models is the very bedrock upon which the games are built.
No matter what indestructible material you make your house out of, it'll fall down if you're building on sand.
That's why I'm quite sure that a sub-based GW2 would be a much different beast than the current version, and who knows if any of us would like it in the first place.

[Vayne.8563]

11 hours ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

You mention "grind" and that's the issue too. It doesn't have to be grindy.

It could just be challenging (lock a reward behind a difficulty threshold or a PvP rating), or fun and engaging (unlocking the Griffon mount was really fun for example, I wish there were more "questlines" like this one.)

There are a few things that are easy to get and I don't grind but have a ton of stuff. I simply play smart and I"m not in a rush. If you want stuff fast, you have to grind. If you're like me and just play through stuff you'll eventually get the stuff you want. For most of the stuff in this game, grind is a mindset.

[Funky.4861]

I agree with the topic title, but not for the same reasons as OP. If gw2 went to a sub model, i would play it more to get value out of my RL money, not because of any so-called 'freeing-up of artistic license/endeavour'. I would feel anxious about missing a days' play-time because that's a waste of money. I would also be encouraged to spend as much time in-game as possible,leading to unhealthy playing habits. In-game, i would be incentivised to do the grinds/dungeons instead of hanging out with my friends and having a chill session (if i wanted to chat with friends, i'd just go to our discord server). I appreciate that you can do both, but not all the time or when you want, and different people chase different things.

[Dawdler.8521]

GW2 going to subscription is like Brexit.

 

You can imagine a utopian subscription MMO all you want but its not going to be the subscription MMO you get because that is an impossible fantasy. But at least the whales are going to be happier, right?

[Mitch.4781]

3 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

GW2 going to subscription is like Brexit.

 

You can imagine a utopian subscription MMO all you want but its not going to be the subscription MMO you get because that is an impossible fantasy. But at least the whales are going to be happier, right?

Or it's also like those that were anti brexit? Nowhere near as bad  a doomsday apocalypse as was feared (hoped) and actually with some benefits?

 

Imagine finding a way to bring BREXIT into GW2 LMFAO

Edited May 2, 2021 by Mitch.4781

[Mahou.3924]

I don't mind paying a sub or gamecard amount in FF14 because, duh, it always had one and the story's great for me. But for GW2, I play it for the story exclusively because it has no sub.  So I can catch up, seldomly also spend a few gems, dabble around with my professions and quit till the next story patch or xpac.  The no sub was, to be honest, a major reason why I even gave GW2 a chance because it came out at a time when I had burnt out of MMOs. The typical MMO aspects are still terribly uninteresting for me, ironically (or not).

[yann.1946]

6 hours ago, Riaenvyr.2091 said:

This "make your own monthly sub" argument gets thrown around way too much, and is always aimed at the incorrect target, so let's break the issue down.

There's a myriad of tiny things going into a monetization system, the most of which involve taking as much money as possible from people for as little effort as possible. Which is true for capitalism as a whole, but let's focus on just this particular argument.

The first portion of a monthly sub is, as I've mentioned in a post before, a difference in design philosophy of F2P and sub-based games. (Strife has made a beautiful video regarding the debate, and, although he sounds rather bitter speaking of certain things, it illustrates the dichotomy very well.)

The F2P - free to play -> free to pay -> fee to pay - model's game design revolves around what can be seen in GW2 in certain areas, too: flashy rewards with a lot of visual noise that put the entirety of the rewards attainable in-game to shame (e.g. pretty much everything in the Gem Store compared to what can be earned for playing the game), inventing problems to sell the solution (e.g. the Build "Templates" fiasco), artificially prolonging the time for no real reason but to make them come back later, also known as time-gating (e.g. How To Wait For Your Skyscale)... as Strife puts it, a simple question of "Does the system favor the player, or the company?"
This practice is akin to a sculptress chopping off the head of her statues, so she can sell overpriced glue with them.
Usually not the artist's first choice.

To be fair, GW2 is leagues away from the worst offender in this regard, and even the worst things in Tyria are tears in the vast oceans of the majority of, say, Korean F2P games. But this game is still in essence a F2P game, which, unfortunately, necessitates the systems listed above.

The sub-based model, on the other hand, gets paid up front, meaning both that the developers have the funding to do their job already in hand, and that their goal isn't to water down the game so the suits can suck more money out of players, but to provide an actually worthwhile experience so the people come back for another month, so the rewards are put behind walls, yes, but walls that players can overcome without getting too frustrated, walls that incentive putting time and effort into breaking them down and reward the wall-breakers accordingly.
Don't get me wrong, it's still manipulation - the human pleasure systems are relatively simple to exploit once understood - but one that satisfies the player's long-term cravings as much as the immediate ones, leading to a much better player retention.

Both models still have to deal with the usual problems when it comes to projects meant to keep people interested for, preferably, their whole lives, which comes with their own myriad of tiny things, but these are the very basic ideas when it comes to this concept.

As for the customer perspective:
People play games for a plethora of reasons - most of which could be summed up as "entertainment", which isn't necessarily fun as in laughter or joy, but also the feeling of ceaseless wonder, nerve-wracking competition, and ability improvement, to name a few.
I haven't met a single person, however, who would play a game just to give away their money. Doesn't mean they don't exist, but even the "whales" are usually simply people looking for their particular itch to be scratched whose mental predispositions are being taken advantage of.

As the old wisdom goes, "it's not when you get there, it's always the climb".
Yes, when boiled down, it's all just a loop of "time spent -> reward", but the path to the reward is what's important to players of a game, because we're exactly that - PLAYERS - not warehouse keepers, not hoarders, not [Banker] NPCs. I mean, we are those things, too, duh, but even though it might feel good to open the equipment panel and take a moment to appreciate all the work put into that all-violet gear borders, I can't imagine anybody just logs in, does that, and after proper six hours of hard-earned, honest staring logs out.
The carrot at the end of the stick is nothing more than a goal to work towards, which could ultimately be completely useless, but it serves as a mark on the road traveled, both before and after reaching it.

Thus, the second part of the monthly sub proposition comes down to a player enjoying actually playing the game, with their mind set on a course. A reachable destination serves both as a guide, and a brief respite before setting for a new one.

Grinding gold, as universal as it is, most of the time devolves into a mindless autopilot mode, as Aodlop pointed out right at the start, because there's no challenge or wonder in such a thing. Sure, it's optimal, but not an engaging gameplay.

TL;DR:
F2P games suck from the ground up, because every design decision is based on how much money it'll make. Sub-based games have to keep players interested, so they're forced to refine their systems to keep people around.
No, there's still no hope of turning GW2 into a sub-based game by now, but this is a very basic explanation of how the sausage is made.
Doesn't mean F2P games can't be fun. Wouldn't be here in the first place if I didn't like Tyria, right.
Doesn't mean the sub-based ones are the end-all and be-all, either.
What it does mean is that the F2P model is murdering the artistic potential of any game it's a part of, and supporting it is reloading the guns for it.
That's why the unrestricted capitalism of the gaming industry is so hideously despicable, but... that is a topic for a different conversation.

You are a little misguided here, while it is true that the goal of developers  under a sub  is to extend playtime, this doesn't mean that the content has to be more enjoyable. It just needs to be enjoyable enough to keep people playing for so long till sunken cost fallacy kicks in. 

 

While under f2p it needs to be fun enough to spend. 

 

Ofcourse this is also a simplification, I'm just trying to explain why you missed a big part about these monitizations. And probably are looking to rosetinted to sub fees

[slave to the grind.5028]

15 hours ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

Unpopular, I know. 

But a sub-based GW2 would mean that all the amazing mounts and sets that have been released over the years would be earnable in game...

I'm just going to point you at blizzard's cash shop, point out none of the mounts they keep releasing are available ingame and leave it at that.

[Danikat.8537]

If this game had a mandatory subscription fee I wouldn't play it.

 

I don't mind the idea in principal, but it doesn't work for me. My free time is very unpredictable so I never know at the start of any given 30-day period if I'll be able to play every day or will barely log in at all. As a result a subscription is highly likely to be a huge waste of money for me. The price is often compared to buying a cup of (IMO overpriced) coffee and for me it would be like buying a coffee, taking a few sips and then throwing the rest away, and I wouldn't do that either.

 

Possibly as a result of that I also end up feeling like I have to play whenever I can to get my money's worth from it, and then when I can be online I feel like I'm only doing it because I have to and don't enjoy it as much. It's silly I know but that's how I feel.

 

I'd much rather pay for stuff and then have it there to use whenever I'm ready. It doesn't matter if I buy something today and then can't log in for a week because it will still be there waiting for me whenever I'm ready rather than having lost 1/4 of the time I paid for. I admit getting content releases free and then paying for cosmetics and convinience items seems weird to me, I'd be happy to go with buying DLC packs which include both together, but it seems to work and at times I've appreciated being able to play the latest release even if I can't pay anything right now.

 

Also every time I've added it up the amount I spend on GW2 in any given year is much less than a year's subscription to any game which offers one.

 

8 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

I wasn't aware that WoW was carried so hard by it's shop.

Kinda proves my old opinion about Subfees just being pure greed lol
I've often wondered what WoW would be like if they just scrapped the mandatory subfee.
If what you say about the shop is true then I would expect the game would make a ton more money if they did make that change.

If the cash shop carries that hard then killing the sub would likely bring in tons of new players.. new players which would probably invest in the shop if they decided to stick around.

 

I think the answer to 'what would WoW be like without the sub fee' is Guild Wars.

 

Seriously. Anet's founders were working for Blizzard during the early development of WoW then quit to start their own company and make their own game and I think one of the driving forces behind that decision was wanting to make a game without a subfee. Considering Mike O'Brien was instrumental in creating the original version of Battle.net used for multiplayer games of Diablo, Starcraft and Warcraft II and apparently pushed for it not to require a subscription from players, and considering one of the big selling points of both GW1 and 2 is not having a subscription fee and when GW1 was released they said they wanted to prove it could be done.

 

Obviously there's a lot of other differences between the two games, but I'm sure that was a big factor.

 

I was following the development of WoW and I remember hearing there had been a "massive schism" at Blizzard and "about half the team" had quit to make their own MMO, then hearing it was actually just a few people who quit and therefore no big deal. I'll always regret not following that news more closely, but at the time I still thought WoW was going to be the game I'd always wanted and never imagined the off-shoot studio would get closer than anyone else.

[Maikimaik.1974]

4 hours ago, Riaenvyr.2091 said:

 

Technically speaking, every single influence other than imagination will be in some way limiting the potential, and even then it could be argued that imagination is a limit unto itself, because no person is currently capable of absolute knowledge.
But that's not the point.
The point is that the F2P model necessitates taking away content from players to monetize it. The subscription model doesn't.
This, again, doesn't mean Gamigo and GameForge don't exist, but the model itself isn't at fault, human greed is.


 

WoW is an interesting topic.
Warcraft is not just a game at this point. Never was to begin with, but during the MMORPG time, the ecosystem it'd spawned through cosplays, music, fan art, the overall passion for it... is much more vast than a simple game. This means people who never heard of the genre, or sometimes even of gaming, would still be able to tell you what WoW is. Not exactly to detail, of course, but just having an idea in their mind is an absurd thing for marketing.

You're also ignoring the fact that even WoW began with nothing. Sure, not literal nothing, because Blizzard were relatively well-known at Vanilla's launch already, but they made their mark upon the world with content that people couldn't get enough of. They still do, to a certain extent, because something lured the people in. And something made them stay.
They weren't putting knives to people's throats and forcing them to play.

And yet, as Daddy pointed out, WoW isn't as massive as it once was, and in recent expansions the novelty isn't able to carry the bulk of player interest. No clue how accurate the numbers are, but expac after expac the numbers went down from the ungodly heights of Wrath, briefly spiking with Legion, and now they're dying again.

Also, saying that WoW has been the first to be this successful is far from true. Before WoW, Ultima Online and EverQuest were astonishingly big for their time, since the world was much smaller back then, so to speak.
The world is also more than the west, and, say, Lineage and Lineage 2 were gargantuan in Asia.
 

 

The sunken cost fallacy surfaces regardless of what has been invested. It could be money, like in Your example, but more often than not it's time people value and suffer through absurd things to not feel like they've wasted.
Not saying people don't want to get their money's worth, but time spent playing is as valuable a currency as cold, hard cash, and the F2P model is taking a grand advantage of it.
Thankfully, if ANet is good at something, it's pissing off the players who care for their game, so nobody ever had a hard time quitting GW2 😄

When it comes to predatory greed, You're disregarding basically everything I've said in my previous post. It was before the TL;DR mark, though, so, ah... mea culpa, I guess.
The difference between the F2P and sub models is the very bedrock upon which the games are built.
No matter what indestructible material you make your house out of, it'll fall down if you're building on sand.
That's why I'm quite sure that a sub-based GW2 would be a much different beast than the current version, and who knows if any of us would like it in the first place.

I really don't understand your point. Everything you're talking about is a hypothetical, utopian scenario in which corporate greed doesn't exist. 

You're completely ignoring that GW2 being a buy to play game was a ginormous selling point from the very start, I'd go as far and say that a huge portion of the playerbase play this game for exactly this reason. 

Is it possible that a subscription model would have worked out? Sure. But it could have also much more likely went down in flames like 99% of other p2p games do.

[Andovar Edoras.2143]

HahahahaNo. No subscription is one of the biggest win points for Gw2. I, like many others, dont want to be chained down by the pressure of a subscription timer ticking.

That, and also the fact that you legit think a subscription model would suddenly shift away from Microtransactions (even though in this game you Can simply earn everything, by playing and getting gold->gems). I'm immediately reminded of games like Wizard101.

[Aodlop.1907]

8 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

A optional sub would be nice for some benefits. Maybe access to all living world stories while subbed like ESO does for their DLCs. Maybe some gem currency per month some small goodies as a way to retain a permanant income layered ontop which seems worthwhile for invested players. 

This does sound like a decent compromise. If we get a small number of additional earnables in game in exchange, I feel like this solution could please everybody. 

[Riaenvyr.2091]

17 minutes ago, yann.1946 said:

You are a little misguided here, while it is true that the goal of developers  under a sub  is to extend playtime, this doesn't mean that the content has to be more enjoyable. It just needs to be enjoyable enough to keep people playing for so long till sunken cost fallacy kicks in. 

 

While under f2p it needs to be fun enough to spend. 

 

Ofcourse this is also a simplification, I'm just trying to explain why you missed a big part about these monitizations. And probably are looking to rosetinted to sub fees

I might need a breath more elaboration on it, then, if I may ask, because no matter how I try to look at it, both instances sound the same: FP2 "needs to be fun enough to spend", while subs "needs to be fun long enough to spend (to buy another month)".

I'd agree with this, though, since it's all business regardless of the scheme, the difference being, as I've explained in the previous post, that sub-based games are required to provide a more entertaining experience by the very design of the monetization model.
I'm re-watching House again, so let's use a metaphor to illustrate the distinction:

Imagine a library where You're charged for each entry. It's in the library's best interest to stockpile on the best books available to make You come back again and again, yes? Sure, they might put a totally innocent tea brewer to sell You refreshment right by the most impeccable chairs, but it's not mandatory. Heavily encouraged, 'cuz tea, but still a choice, since You're there for the books.

Whereas the F2P model doesn't require an entry fee, and You're completely free to browse the books in the Romance and Kids sections, but unlocking every other section is 400 gems, each page of a book is 200 gems, unlocking punctuation is 350 gems per book, renting a wooden log with branches sticking out is free, but a real chair is 400 gems, BUT a CUSHIONED chair is only 600 gems, plus You get this Happy Customer ticket for spending 30 minutes in the library each day...

The world is, naturally, far from black-and-white, and as such there's bound to be as much greed as players can stomach everywhere, and, likewise, a F2P model doesn't immediately mean a game is complete garbage.
The principles upon which they're built simply make them predisposed for certain things.

[Danikat.8537]

18 minutes ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

This does sound like a decent compromise. If we get a small number of additional earnables in game in exchange, I feel like this solution could please everybody. 

Or it could be like ESO where subscribers are constantly complaining that they don't get enough for their money and more things should be locked behind the subscription to justify the cost they've chosen to pay for the current benefits, so lots of new QoL features which are added to the game become subscription-only but somehow it's never enough or never the right things so the complaints continue.

 

Also personally I don't think access to DLC as long as you're subscribing is a good deal when you've also got the option to buy it permanently. It works as a trial but long-term it works out cheaper to just buy it so then they need to add other incentives to keep you subscribed.

 

(If we assume Icebrood Saga will cost 960 gems like seasons 3 and 4 then it costs 4,160 gems to get all the available living story episodes. Thats £44.20. If we assume Anet offered a relatively cheap subscription, say £8.50 per month - equivalent to buying 800 gems - then anyone playing for more than 6 months is better off buying the living story than subscribing to get it.)

 

In ESO that's mainly the craft bag (their verison of material storage), if you subscribe you've got it, if not you have to keep materials in your bank and inventory. A lot of people say they only subscribe to keep access to the craft bag because they find the game unplayable without it.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Danikat.8537

[Riaenvyr.2091]

11 minutes ago, Maikimaik.1974 said:

I really don't understand your point. Everything you're talking about is a hypothetical, utopian scenario in which corporate greed doesn't exist. 

You're completely ignoring that GW2 being a buy to play game was a ginormous selling point from the very start, I'd go as far and say that a huge portion of the playerbase play this game for exactly this reason. 

Is it possible that a subscription model would have worked out? Sure. But it could have also much more likely went down in flames like 99% of other p2p games do.

I've absolutely no idea what portion of the post You're quoting is even capable of being hypothetical, as basically everything is simply explaining my previous post, and even that one's more about explaining the very basic principles of the differences between a F2P and sub-based monetization models, so... do be a bit more precise, if it's not just an ad hom. If it is, be more creative!

GW2 is, for all intents and purposes, a F2P game. The amount of quality content one gets for buying the game, even disregarding all the Living World seasons, is about as ridiculous as what CDPR ask for Wild Hunt or Supergiant for anything they touched so far.
It, unfortunately, also means that we're getting sub-par features and design decisions solely because of lack of funding, since ANet are abysmally far from incompetent, as demonstrated in all the stuff people fall in love with.

I completely agree that if the game switched to a monthly fee this instant, virtually nobody would stay, because for that the game simply isn't good enough. But it wasn't made to be good enough for that.
It's like building a castle of sand at the beach, then calling it a royal palace, with the king executing the builders once the tide rises. Of course it's bananas. But I've been saying it basically in every single post, and people still apparently don't read me 😄

[Maikimaik.1974]

6 minutes ago, Riaenvyr.2091 said:

I've absolutely no idea what portion of the post You're quoting is even capable of being hypothetical, as basically everything is simply explaining my previous post, and even that one's more about explaining the very basic principles of the differences between a F2P and sub-based monetization models, so... do be a bit more precise, if it's not just an ad hom. If it is, be more creative!

GW2 is, for all intents and purposes, a F2P game. The amount of quality content one gets for buying the game, even disregarding all the Living World seasons, is about as ridiculous as what CDPR ask for Wild Hunt or Supergiant for anything they touched so far.
It, unfortunately, also means that we're getting sub-par features and design decisions solely because of lack of funding, since ANet are abysmally far from incompetent, as demonstrated in all the stuff people fall in love with.

I completely agree that if the game switched to a monthly fee this instant, virtually nobody would stay, because for that the game simply isn't good enough. But it wasn't made to be good enough for that.
It's like building a castle of sand at the beach, then calling it a royal palace, with the king executing the builders once the tide rises. Of course it's bananas. But I've been saying it basically in every single post, and people still apparently don't read me 😄

Okay so what is your point then? 

You know that GW2 will never be p2p, so what's the point of this thread? 

Edited May 2, 2021 by Maikimaik.1974