VIP / Shop and my random thoughts

[Dev]

Ah guys. What do you want?

You don’t want subscriptions? - fine
You don’t want a ridiculous high one time fee? - fine
You don’t want any kind of true benefit from a real money shop? - fine
You don’t want many paid addons? - fine
You don’t want cosmetics at a ridiculous price? - fine

So... who pays the developers and servers? Do you think that running on AWS or any cloud provider is ‘cheap’? They have to keep their tools updated, buy licenses, external people. Pay the studio rooms, employees and just everything else.

It may have worked for a ‘giant’ company with a Publisher like GuildWars, but I’m pretty sure they had way more funding money and owned/purchased the hardware. That kept the recurring cost way lower. Having more employees and creating two paid (full price!) expansions per year, was then mandatory to stay afloat. And if you calculate that, it’s around 2*39€ per year, if you wanted to stay with the competition and get the latest classes and content. The base game also started with around 45€. Hm... thats around 80€/12Months which is ~6,70€ if you make it a monthly fee.

Now it’s time to remember, that fractured is an absolute niche game. It might grow out of it, but right now only a couple people in my circles are remotely interested at all. Most dislike the iso2D and all that farming/collecting/‘skilling’. It looks outdated on the first glance of an inexperienced person. Why do you think the currently raised amount is so ‘low’? Even though much of it was due to lack of advertising and marketing... And now people just say: ‘Ah. Let’s wait if they complete it before I spend money’.

Looking at the currently biggest competitor (Albion) the VIP/Premium nets you quite some benefits, but its totally playable without it. It speeds things up but does not yield into any direct advantage during battles. Most people have no problem with paying that money, as a yearly subscription is below 5€/pMonth so not even 5$ a month - for a game which continues to get enhanced, maintained and free(!) content-updates. No requirements to buy the game itself, no paid AddOns. If its not worth that one time ice-cream or pack of cigarettes per month, how is it worth you invest HOURS upon HOURS into it? And you/your friends can still do exactly that. Play for absolutely free and get the premium through inGame-Currency - if you even need it.

The reason not all of the ‘cheaper’ packs are sold out, is due to the fact that the benefits are nice, but (at least for me) not interesting. I’ve spent around 120€ on the EliteDangerous - LifetimeExpansionPass, simply to support the games development and get a return in the long-run. Did not have to buy a single AddOn and so it pays for itself. Would love to get the Knights-Package but eh... VIP will be a sad story with 0 benefits and takes years to remotely pay itself off, if I even play it that long and it ever completes development. Also I couldn’t care less about the Title (as you get better sounding ones from the Foundation (IMHO)) and inGame-Gold.

But all this ‘uhhh do not make this’, ‘don’t sell that’, ‘the VIP bonuses should be below 5%’ and so on... it will only kill Fractured in the long run. There are and will always be some CashCows and hardcore fans to invest a lot of money, but it might just not be enough. Most people are cheapskates and would not pay a dime if they could - but giving them just one small disadvantage, will bring them to the forums, crying how crappy everything is. Get a job maybe?

So... let’s close my rant with this:

You get what you pay for - Why shouldn’t the developer’s?

[Xzoviac]

@Dev

@Dev said in VIP / Shop and my random thoughts:

Ah guys. What do you want?

You don’t want subscriptions? - fine
You don’t want a ridiculous high one time fee? - fine
You don’t want any kind of true benefit from a real money shop? - fine
You don’t want many paid addons? - fine
You don’t want cosmetics at a ridiculous price? - fine

So... who pays the developers and servers? Do you think that running on AWS or any cloud provider is ‘cheap’? They have to keep their tools updated, buy licenses, external people. Pay the studio rooms, employees and just everything else.

It may have worked for a ‘giant’ company with a Publisher like GuildWars, but I’m pretty sure they had way more funding money and owned/purchased the hardware. That kept the recurring cost way lower. Having more employees and creating two paid (full price!) expansions per year, was then mandatory to stay afloat. And if you calculate that, it’s around 2*39€ per year, if you wanted to stay with the competition and get the latest classes and content. The base game also started with around 45€. Hm... thats around 80€/12Months which is ~6,70€ if you make it a monthly fee.

Now it’s time to remember, that fractured is an absolute niche game. It might grow out of it, but right now only a couple people in my circles are remotely interested at all. Most dislike the iso2D and all that farming/collecting/‘skilling’. It looks outdated on the first glance of an inexperienced person. Why do you think the currently raised amount is so ‘low’? Even though much of it was due to lack of advertising and marketing... And now people just say: ‘Ah. Let’s wait if they complete it before I spend money’.

Looking at the currently biggest competitor (Albion) the VIP/Premium nets you quite some benefits, but its totally playable without it. It speeds things up but does not yield into any direct advantage during battles. Most people have no problem with paying that money, as a yearly subscription is below 5€/pMonth so not even 5$ a month - for a game which continues to get enhanced, maintained and free(!) content-updates. No requirements to buy the game itself, no paid AddOns. If its not worth that one time ice-cream or pack of cigarettes per month, how is it worth you invest HOURS upon HOURS into it? And you/your friends can still do exactly that. Play for absolutely free and get the premium through inGame-Currency - if you even need it.

The reason not all of the ‘cheaper’ packs are sold out, is due to the fact that the benefits are nice, but (at least for me) not interesting. I’ve spent around 120€ on the EliteDangerous - LifetimeExpansionPass, simply to support the games development and get a return in the long-run. Did not have to buy a single AddOn and so it pays for itself. Would love to get the Knights-Package but eh... VIP will be a sad story with 0 benefits and takes years to remotely pay itself off, if I even play it that long and it ever completes development. Also I couldn’t care less about the Title (as you get better sounding ones from the Foundation (IMHO)) and inGame-Gold.

But all this ‘uhhh do not make this’, ‘don’t sell that’, ‘the VIP bonuses should be below 5%’ and so on... it will only kill Fractured in the long run. There are and will always be some CashCows and hardcore fans to invest a lot of money, but it might just not be enough. Most people are cheapskates and would not pay a dime if they could - but giving them just one small disadvantage, will bring them to the forums, crying how crappy everything is. Get a job maybe?

So... let’s close my rant with this:

You get what you pay for - Why shouldn’t the developer’s?

I understand you want this company to Succeed (so do I) first off to counter your argument about "uhh do not make this , do not sell this" - assuming its about the thread i opened yesterday? GameShopOpinion
Online games - can use Cosmetic to fund online services , take a look at DOTA (its completely free apart from cosmetics)

But to get in to the grit of your post, wanting the company to succeed?
Im gonna tell you my opinion on why Cash shops need to be very careful, because a bad cash-shop Modle, One that makes the company look greedy or puts must buy items in to the cash shop to stop the game being monotonous (Grind or pay options)

P2Win actually hurts games , and the modern gamer has just come to accept it as if we have no choice
P2W games will become frustrating at some point and will in most cases punish players who don't use the Cash shop, Causing people to leave

Do you like being scammed? - buying a game then being forced to spend another 50 quid on bag upgrades bag weight improvements on every char , because "devs gotta eat"
What sort of Elitist mentality of player do you think this brings?

Do you enjoy fair game play?, think about it long and hard , do you actually want the people that can only afford to buy the game once (and not sub) to stop playing because with out game shop subs the game is pointless?, less players = worse economy , worse community , higher risk of the game dyeing
And if you don't care about community then, well, you aren't really an MMO player

A company's image and values, is worth a hundred times more then money.
I understand your fear that the game wont stay afloat unless it has some minor p2w
but the power of cosmetics is all you need - take a look at maple story 2.

If you would like to hear someone explain it better, I know they are free to play mmos but like you said Fractured is a niche, so if it doent get a huge player base it likely will go free 2 play as well

[Jetah]

who said we dont want cosmetics?

[Gothix]

Yes.. we do not want cosmetics at ridiculous price. But we do want cosmetics at a decent price, and we will buy them.
We don't want high one time fee. We want decent one time fee, and we will pay it.
We don't want P2W from money shop. We want small convenience from money shop and we will pay it.

All that will pay developers, and make the game go.

[Jetah]

@Gothix said in VIP / Shop and my random thoughts:

We want small convenience from money shop and we will pay it.

i dont want any convenience. that's a fine line to walk and i doubt anyone knows how to do it.

[Gothix]

@Jetah said in VIP / Shop and my random thoughts:

@Gothix said in VIP / Shop and my random thoughts:

We want small convenience from money shop and we will pay it.

i dont want any convenience. that's a fine line to walk and i doubt anyone knows how to do it.

If done properly of course. Without crossing into P2W.

For example, an extra amounts of bag space (and carry capacity overall) in a game that's about farming and fighting for resources would not be OK.

But some small things that do not affect combat and guild competitiveness could be ok. Perhaps some small stuff connected with housing.

[Tuoni]

@Dev said in VIP / Shop and my random thoughts:

Looking at the currently biggest competitor (Albion) the VIP/Premium nets you quite some benefits, but its totally playable without it. It speeds things up but does not yield into any direct advantage during battles. Most people have no problem with paying that money, as a yearly subscription is below 5€/pMonth so not even 5$ a month - for a game which continues to get enhanced, maintained and free(!) content-updates. No requirements to buy the game itself, no paid AddOns. If its not worth that one time ice-cream or pack of cigarettes per month, how is it worth you invest HOURS upon HOURS into it? And you/your friends can still do exactly that. Play for absolutely free and get the premium through inGame-Currency - if you even need it.

Totally playable you say.. Everything is playable, but in Albion online the premium benefits are massive, especially because we are talking about game where progression is huge part of the game. You decided to use 1 year subs as an example to underrate the fee. Maybe you should been use 1 month instead of 1 year, which is 9,95$. And in Albion you benefit from multiple characters and it is effective to share progression between those. Premium is not account wide, so you need to buy premium separately to every character so the monthly prices can in some cases be quite high. Yeah the game has been free about month now, but before that it was b2p several years. SBI needed to go for f2p to get more players and this same can easily come ahead with DS too. And on top of this, if we think of how you can buy ingame currency with real money and with ingame currency you can buy a lot of stuff and benefits.. Sooo Albion's business model is quite horrible actually and I hope we do not see anything like that here in Fractured, and what I have understood, DS has more reasonable approach for their business model, when it is planned b2p + optional subs + cosmetic cash shop. And if the optional subs advantages are calm, then I do not see any problems there either.

ALBION ONLINE SHOP

[Kansei]

Maybe I've been under a rock but I feel like there hasn't been an issue with prices. Everything has seemed fair and nothing out of proportion.

[Xzoviac]

@Kansei said in VIP / Shop and my random thoughts:

Maybe I've been under a rock but I feel like there hasn't been an issue with prices. Everything has seemed fair and nothing out of proportion.

Have we got details on what is inside the cash shop then?, as that is what we are talking about, could you post a link? I'd like to look

[Drekkennought]

As long as it isn't subscription based or pay to win, I don't think as many people care as you believe.

[Kralith]

I want Shirts with the Logo of Shrooffee

[Xzoviac]

@Drekkennought so as long as it's not pay 2 win (what i have been saying) the amount of people who care is less then I believe?, so if it is pay to win, ( the reason for the topic)
The amount of people who will care is the amount I think?

Cheers for pointing that out

[Kralith]

@Dev said in VIP / Shop and my random thoughts:

Ah guys. What do you want?

A fair game without Pay2Win Options!

You don’t want subscriptions? - fine

There will be a subscription, it is called VIP and gives you the benefit not to care about the Carpenter NPC

You don’t want a ridiculous high one time fee? - fine
You don’t want any kind of true benefit from a real money shop? - fine
You don’t want many paid addons? - fine
You don’t want cosmetics at a ridiculous price? - fine

The rest of the list i don't get, since it seems you didn't read all the informations we have about the game and the planned Shop Features.
There will be no Pay2Win, there will be just cosmetics (Clothes, Blueprints, Pets and such stuff).
I am sure, there will be no ridiculous price, i experienced Dynamight as a quite fair Studio that listen to their community.

So... who pays the developers and servers?

We will pay them for buying cosmetic stuff.
And believe me, we are more than you expect who are willing to pay just for cosmetics.

Now it’s time to remember, that fractured is an absolute niche game. It might grow out of it, but right now only a couple people in my circles are remotely interested at all. Most dislike the iso2D and all that farming/collecting/‘skilling’.

Yes Niche Game maybe, but not so Niche as you think.
Also it is NOT iso2d, it is Iso 3D.

It looks outdated on the first glance of an inexperienced person.

It does not look outdated. Or want you say games like PoE are outdated?
I see Fractured Graphics and it remembers me much on PoE or Diablo lookalike.
Also remember, we are still in a very very early state. Did you ever seen first footages of PoE, it was looking way more "ugly" than Fractured in his first days.

Looking at the currently biggest competitor (Albion) the VIP/Premium nets you quite some benefits, but its totally playable without it.

Fractured also will be totally playable without the VIP.

The Rest of your Ranting i don't want to comment, because it seems for me, you did not inform you completly about the future benefits.
You also asume other games was paid out of all packs, just Fractured was not. And thats not true at all.
Other games not even was that open with all their stuff in this early phase.
They wait often till Beta, before people are able to talk about. And till our Beta we will have around 2 years, much can happen in this 2 years of developing.

Let the guys do their work!
And there is one thing you are right, it is about us, if they will be able to do it, with our money.
What did you spend on it?

[Dev]

Heya everyone and thanks for the feedback!

If you did not guess it already, then let me tell you, that I was not really serious about my post. Just wanted to push some of you forward, to hear your opinions. It is good to see the StepUp from the community against any form of P2W and with some alternative suggestions and concepts. I dislike the concept of Albion tbh, as it is amazing how much you can speed up with premium. And how much money people make/can suck out of the market if they invest (more) real money.

I‘ve been working as a Developer on a mobile game with around ~1200 concurrent users and was also responsible for some of the monetisation. So I know a little about how much money just the usual few and regular players are willed to spend, even for cosmetics only. Obviously VIP got a nice benefit already, which is a great plus.

@Kralith
I wanted to apologize to you personally, as it seemed like you were offended by my post. It does not matter to me if it’s ISO3D or ISO2D, as I‘m solely interested in the gameplay. Additionally I never said it looked ‚outdated‘ or ‚old‘ to me, but to the eye of an inexperienced or younger person. I‘ve shown it to a couple students and they were not that visually appealed. But as you said, it’s a long way to go and I’m very glad they are this open and already let us experience / see parts of the content. I will continue to spread it in my circles.

Thank god you did not comment everything, but I highly enjoyed reading your post. Thanks

Beside that, code on!

[Jetah]

@Dev
but this has been discussed already...

[Kralith]

@Dev don't worry, i was not offended in real, just sometimes if i write i walk a bit on a line