Has there been plenty of chat about the best approach to pay to play Cardhunter? The way I see it after buying lots of free pizza, there will always be people who spend big and have an advantage with cards. What about the subscription model where you pay $X a month, and get access to special adventures, better item drops, free pizza etc. Free to play players still get to farm for items, but the subscribers get unique stuff and regular pizza to buy more. It also gives BM a regular income to help develop the game. There is also the incentive to keep fresh stuff in the game to keep subscribers happy. I would personally also pay an upfront price to get into the game (extra pizza and starters?). I guess there are always people who expect to play for free - but i feel that developers need to earn a crust and we should pay them for their hard work.
I hope they do a "starter pack" for the game, that includes an amount of pizza (or possibly starts with all premium dungeons unlocked et c). I believe some people just prefer to pay up front rather than use microtransactions.
The current model seams fine to me. Pizza bought in numbers with higher numbers having it be cheaper, Bundles of adventures making it so if you know you want them all you can get them for a very nice price.
My point was that with subscriptions it's a level playing field, you all get the same delivery of pizza. I guess people coming late are at a disadvantage though! I Would love to see the income analysis of both approaches - lots of credits bough by a few versus most people in a subscription. I'm sure BM would love a steady income to help pay the wages?
I don't think any kind of xp boosters, drop rate enhancements or similar are stuff that that BM will do - based on anything I've seen of their game design philosophy in game - so any kind of subscription system would just give people a set amount of pizza a month, which might be a bit hard to say if it's "worth" it when the new player won't know if they'll have anything but chests to spend the pizza on. Unless a sub comes with new Ben Lee-created avatars every month or something like that... Still think starter packs - or ingame package deals (like unlock all avatars) will get the most purchases.
Subs are a bad idea in general as a few people spending absurd amounts of money outweighs the subscription model almost on its own based on mmo market research. It also segregates the community making it two communitys and that is never good for a game ever.
That being said - a sub model wouldn't exclude extra pizza buying. There will always be a segregation between fully free players (trust me, they will be there), medium spenders and whales. There will be people that spend a lot of money if there's any chance of them getting an edge - it's guaranteed.
I know that but not in the exact same way on the simple basis of people being subscribers or not. There will be good players stuck in mediocrity and bad players in the top based on how much they spent at least early on. But its not as clean cut as subscribers and non subscribers. Besides people who just get by on their money tend to either be despised or if this game manages to hit a great balance fall out of mind soon enough. Personally I'm looking to spend about a tripple A's worth on card hunter each year. I have no idea how this would compare to a years subscription but i know free to player people are gasping and whales are laughing at that amount.
I usually never spend on f2p games - as the business models are usually horribly p2w (so I don't bother, there is always someone able/willing to go extremes), that being said - I will spend money on this game, would just have preferred to pay up front (and more with new content coming). I'm set to spend at least half of a triple A title (for launch content), and more depending on game growth/expansions et c. More of a "buy this pack" rather than "buy some ingame currency and buy stuff" - it's a psychological thing.
What if they had packs with prices in dollars or pizza would that help you feel better or just make it worse?
Buying pizza to buy an ingame content pack, is excessive gating - if the game goes live and ends up on steam etc, I'd like to see purchases from the outside not being pizza>then buy ingame But having pizza and being able to buy it ingame as well as an option.
As I've said before, I think, I have spent far more money on the MMO's I play ( LOTRO and Star Trek Online ) #NERD ALERT!# since they became f2p as I simply don't play regularly enough to warrant a subscription, but I have bought a shedload of expansions and cosmetics using real money. I would probably do the same thing for Card Hunter, spend an initial amount of cash either for a 'Starter Pack' or for $50 worth of Pizza and continue to 'top up' either small amounts fairly regularly or bigger amounts spaced out to buy extra adventures. I confess here and now that I would pay good cash money for new / unique / time restricted cosmetic stuff. Even better if some of the stuff can be won as exclusive rewards from adventures...
I like the subscription model as it gives the developer a regular income, and is an incentive to continue to add stuff to the game. If it stays fresh people will keep up membership. Having subscriber only adventures with unique loot that only they can get would work, and make them regular and time limited to keep people logging in for the once only items. Eredan does this well.
I'm definitely with pengw1n on that one disregarding the point i don't like the subscription model to begin with.
I'm just surprised that you even started this topic as I have read it so many times on this forums already. Instead of starting new and new topics - can't we just add more to the previous ones?
Reading your statements I feel like you haven't read all that much, just like pengw1n said about Blue Manchu's philosophy. I'm sorry if it sounds a little bit harsh but I'm just trying to make my point clear.
@Womble: Nope, unless you're like WoW where you've got years of history and MILLIONS of people already, most new MMOs won't have enough to maintain itself if it's strictly subscription. Instead you're looking at microtransaction (which, given the mobile exsample, can generate some silly amount of cash from the rich kids or oblivious ones) or something in between like what TERA turned into, free to play but with more benefits for subscriber. Or, in some game, there's something akin to subscriber benefit, but in the form of XX-days item that allow you to have said benefit (like extra exp gain, or free teleport between towns so you don't have to run) I know one of your suggestion is that, but then what happened when the person stop paying? Are their stuffs (the paid-only adventures) taken from them? That is somewhat against the spirit of tabletop RPG (where once you've bought a rulebook, it's yours forever) And you're greatly underestimating the power of microtransaction, you can read Gabe Newell's comment about how much TF2's changed since they went F2P (and for the better in term of profit) for example.
It's okay if the main topic has dropped from the front page. I'd also prefer a "search before post" approach, but I don't think this is hurting anything right now.
No joke! Tf2 10 dolar game? mehhh, Tf2 F2p! oh yeah! (over 100$+ spend) yeah... i'm a wierd.... anyway I think maybe a subscriber can get a little more pizza per month? like 450 slices instead of 400? with the current shop online too, so you can be a F2P or Subscriber or a casual buyer
