Price Modelling Guess and Hopes for the Way it Will Really Be

Alright, enough of this. This is becoming less of a discussion and more of an E-peen war. Calm down guys. Just drop it.

 

I havent "misinterpreted" anything..the verbiage you used is pretty clear bro. And cease and desist LOL???? Get a clue before you start talking like a lawyer....My posts are just as valid as yours.

 

I know I'm late to this conversation, but I'd have no problem paying for "necessary" content.

Unlike some of the free-to-play MMOs, at some point the content of the game will get stale for users. As such, they have to continue developing content in order to retain players. It's ludicrous to expect them to do that without any financial incentive.

Also, Blue Manchu isn't a large studio, or backed by one. Their number one agenda, aside from making the game, is creating a player base. I suspect it's a lot harder to do that with a one-time payment model than it is a free-to-play/pay-for-DLC model. The best strategy is to offer some of the game for free, and if people like that they can buy the content to keep playing. If they don't like the game - well, they weren't going to spend money on it anyway, no harm no foul.

 

I never suggested that they didn't charge real money for anything. I suggested that all necessary content "also" be purchasable with in game earned currency. A system in the vein of League of Legends for example.

 

I loathe pay to win. I don't touch those games with a ten foot pole.

I'm very much hoping that time shortcuts, convenience and vanity stuff is the only things you can buy, no payment exclusive content. Boosters that lets you "get it now", instead of grinding the adventures, sure, go ahead. New pay-only dungeons, super boosters with exclusive content, etc, I'm gone.

That said, some things I can stomach being exclusive. New classes? Not needed to play, thus ok to be pay to unlock, assuming they don't break balance and become must haves. Pay only consumable item that lets you access some town options from inside a dungeon, fine(crap, I forgot to bring X, that I need for this fight, and I don't want to start over... ok pay up for a potion of storage access or do without/restart adventure).

I've payed before for unlocking classes, I've payed for subscriptions to games, but I have never nor will I ever pay for required-to-compete item upgrades, and stuff like that. I know some f2p games where a complete set of endgame gear costs hundreds of dollars to craft/upgrade, and I stay the hell away from them, I'd rather pay $10-15 monthly for a subscription. Likewise online collectible card games where you have to buy tons of pricy b0osters to get the good cards to compete, forget it, I'd rather go back to wasting my money on magic: the gathering, and having real physical cards, that I can sell on again for real money when I tire.

 

I don't know how the final model is going to turn out... but I do know that I want to support the game with my money.

It seems to me if half the modules released are free and the rest of them must be purchased... either as a bulk purchase (preferred) or through several transactions... I would be okay with that. Folks that don't want to spend money can still experience a huge portion of the game. If they really like what they are experiencing, they will spend the money.
I know this won't be the case... but I can guarantee that there will exist high level modules that need to be purchased. It just seems natural. I can't imagine complaining about this when so much has been given to you for free.

Additionally, I hope they make those cardboard standees available for purchase.

 

That's not a free to play game. That's a demo.

Nothing wrong with that, just don't label it free to play.

 

I don't know if I agree with that 100%. It makes sense but at the same time, there is something missing.

If this game is half as fun as it looks like it is going to be, I'll want to spend $70 over the course of the 1st month with more on the way depending on how the experience treats meh. My hope is that Blue Manchu releases enough stuff to sate that. I'll buy stuff I don't even really want! =D
Because what I really want is for Card Hunter to be successful for Blue Manchu. Maybe a sequel (with a better name) will come out and include even more RPG elements.

I really, really hope that I'm not the only one whom feels like this.

 

I hope they end up with a model similar to LoL. Everything is accessible in game given enough time to unlock it. Nothing that gives an advantage is available for real money. I'm hoping for something like new adventure modules needing to be unlocked and you can either earn it or pay to unlock it right away.

 

Exactly, gcaliber. If I end up having to pay money just to get my starting character(s) up to the max level and/or high level modules then I am out. That would mean the game is acting as a pay-to-win versus being free to play. It needs to be open just like League of Legends so that whether you are earning ingame content via an ingame earned currency system (like IP in LoL) or just outright buying it with real money (like Riot points in LoL) you can still be competitive and on equal grounds with other players.

I also do not want to see one of those timing systems in it like some "F2P" games have where you are limited to how much you can play unless you buy more time or wait for your free time to regenerate. I hate that stuff!

 

To my understanding, they've explicitly said this is the kind of model Card Hunter is not going to have. Which, in my opinion, is a fantastic thing.

 

Why it has to be like that? I would like the old good single payment system... I don't like the idea of paying real money for digital cards or adventures...

 

For a game like this with a small team that (presumably) intends to both maintain the infrastructure necessary for multiplayer, as well as continue to add content to and expand the base game, they need a constant and (hopefully) reliable income stream. Selling the entire game for an upfront cost would end up front-loading this income, possibly making it impossible for Blue Manchu to profitably operate the game long-term. The best case for everyone would be for the game to steadily build a solid and inclusive community that makes regular financial contributions to the game, essentially treating it like a subscription service. That way, the community would have access to a rich and fun online gaming experience, Card Hunter would continue to evolve and be polished, and the folks in Blue Manchu would get to eat!

There are also good reasons to not explicitly make Card Hunter a subscription service, or a for-pay product. Probably the biggest one is the game having a strong multi-player component; in that case, you want players to have as large a pool of opponents as possible, and sticking a subscription barrier in front of prospective players is a good way to cut that off at the knees.

League of Legends' system "works" because of a few key factors...

• They have a gameplay-related chunk (playable Champions) that players are OK with them selling for cash, and that have a clever "trial" system associated with them (the free Champion rotation).
• They can reliably produce additional such chunks (Champions) on a very regular basis (every two weeks).
• Those chunks can be earned through gameplay, but it takes a very long time: a newly released Champion can take upwards of 30-40 hours to earn.

It's thus difficult to port their system into a different, non action-RTS game simply because all of those aspects must be present for it to work. What other type of game has a chunk of content equivalent to Champions that can be produced as quickly and teased to players as elegantly? I honestly cannot think of one in a traditional MMO that doesn't feel strongly like allowing players to "pay to win"*.

I haven't given it a lot of thought, but I think the closest way you could get a system like that into Card Hunter would be...

• Add a Premium Shop to the game somewhere.
• Every few weeks, Blue Manchu adds a new card to the game, attached to one or several new items. Those items go up for sale in the Premium Shop for an extremely large amount of soft currency (Gold), or for a modest amount of cash.

Obviously, some of those specifics are tweakable (namely, it might be better to release multiple cards at once, even if it throws off the "every two week" schedule), but at its core, that's about how the League of Legends system works. It's missing an equivalent to the free Champion rotation system, but I can't think of an elegant analogy here, barring perhaps adding items that decay and eventually break.




* Can we all agree to stop using this phrase? It'd be great for my sanity.

 

Well, we already know that the game will have shops. Not much reason to have gold drops otherwise.

If Rudolpho is to be believed, the "random element" in those is that their stock changes daily. Whether they also have a limited stock of items remains to be seen; that is to say, whether or not it's possible that you can buy everything they have, leaving nothing for purchase until they restock the next day. If that's the case, it makes sense to me that the Premium Shop would have a static set of items available and would never run out of them, but that said items cost way more gold than at the rest of the shops in the game (or can be had for real-life money).

An interesting tangent to this concept: if new items are always available from the Premium Shop at a premium gold price, what happens if there's also a chance that one of your regular shops will spawn one of the new items for sale for a regular gold price? This would end up working something like Team Fortress 2's system in which you can either gamble that one of your weekly loot drops will be a newly released item, or "jump the queue" and just buy all the new stuff as a package from the game's cash shop.