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How I would have done F2P...
smoochan
Posts: 2,564 Arc User
I was musing last night on how bad an idea Archetypes were, and then I started thinking about how I would have done the move to F2P for champions online. And this is what I came up with.
1. Archetypes would never have existed.
2. When you first start a CO account, you get 1 character slot. Since archetypes don't exist, this character would obviously be a freeform character. Instead of purchasing archetypes when making additional characters, players would instead be purchasing character slots, the price of which might be slightly higher than what they are currently ( the account character slots, not the FF character slots), but not much. FF characters, for most people, are like potato chips... you can't just have one. Anyone who has had multiple archetype characters would reasonably be likely to have multiple FF characters; possibly even more FF characters than ATs, because you can only have so many Archetypes before you have them all. Freeform characters are also better at driving sales of Retcon tokens.
3. Subscriptions and LTS would no longer be offered. Those players who had subs at the time of the move to F2P would be converted to F2P accounts; see below for the specifics of that process.
4. Subscribing players would go through a "cash out" process. They would no longer have automatic free access to all the things that they had through their subscription; anything they had actually purchased aside from that would remain purchased. Then, for every month that the player had been subscribed, they would receive an amount of Zen equal to the Zen value of their monthly payment, minus their monthly stipend; this total would then be raised by a certain percentage, resulting in some "bonus" zen. The end result would be that the longer someone had been subscribed, the more of those "free" things they could reacquire, in essence giving the player back their money as they were put into a situation where they had only access to what anyone else would have access to for free.
5. LTS players would simply retain their LTS status, but no longer receive monthly stipends. They would maintain free access to all content they had previously had free access to, but would not receive free access to future content. LTS would stop being offered the moment the company knew that it was going F2P, several months in advance of the actual move.
NOTE: If the company lawyers told me I could do it, LTS players would also be converted to F2P status, and would receive an amount of Zen equal to what they had paid for their LTS (monthly stipends would not be subtracted), then raised by a percentage. This would be my preferred method, so that everyone effectively gets what they paid for, and so that people who have paid more money over time don't feel like they are getting less than someone who only paid a large sum once.
6. A new type of Z-Store token would be offered, costing the same amount as a regular character slot token, that would allow players to convert a character slot they no longer had access to into a useable slot, for those players who were formerly subscribers.
7. All veteran benefits earned by subscribers would stay in tact, and these veteran benefits would now become available to all F2P players, likely with the time needed to acquire rewards increased, and an "acceleration program" wherein cash purchases of Zen would accelerate players through the timeline; former subscribers would stay in the current timeline up until the day of the last reward that was released prior to the move to F2P.
1. Archetypes would never have existed.
2. When you first start a CO account, you get 1 character slot. Since archetypes don't exist, this character would obviously be a freeform character. Instead of purchasing archetypes when making additional characters, players would instead be purchasing character slots, the price of which might be slightly higher than what they are currently ( the account character slots, not the FF character slots), but not much. FF characters, for most people, are like potato chips... you can't just have one. Anyone who has had multiple archetype characters would reasonably be likely to have multiple FF characters; possibly even more FF characters than ATs, because you can only have so many Archetypes before you have them all. Freeform characters are also better at driving sales of Retcon tokens.
3. Subscriptions and LTS would no longer be offered. Those players who had subs at the time of the move to F2P would be converted to F2P accounts; see below for the specifics of that process.
4. Subscribing players would go through a "cash out" process. They would no longer have automatic free access to all the things that they had through their subscription; anything they had actually purchased aside from that would remain purchased. Then, for every month that the player had been subscribed, they would receive an amount of Zen equal to the Zen value of their monthly payment, minus their monthly stipend; this total would then be raised by a certain percentage, resulting in some "bonus" zen. The end result would be that the longer someone had been subscribed, the more of those "free" things they could reacquire, in essence giving the player back their money as they were put into a situation where they had only access to what anyone else would have access to for free.
5. LTS players would simply retain their LTS status, but no longer receive monthly stipends. They would maintain free access to all content they had previously had free access to, but would not receive free access to future content. LTS would stop being offered the moment the company knew that it was going F2P, several months in advance of the actual move.
NOTE: If the company lawyers told me I could do it, LTS players would also be converted to F2P status, and would receive an amount of Zen equal to what they had paid for their LTS (monthly stipends would not be subtracted), then raised by a percentage. This would be my preferred method, so that everyone effectively gets what they paid for, and so that people who have paid more money over time don't feel like they are getting less than someone who only paid a large sum once.
6. A new type of Z-Store token would be offered, costing the same amount as a regular character slot token, that would allow players to convert a character slot they no longer had access to into a useable slot, for those players who were formerly subscribers.
7. All veteran benefits earned by subscribers would stay in tact, and these veteran benefits would now become available to all F2P players, likely with the time needed to acquire rewards increased, and an "acceleration program" wherein cash purchases of Zen would accelerate players through the timeline; former subscribers would stay in the current timeline up until the day of the last reward that was released prior to the move to F2P.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
Post edited by smoochan on
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CO has other aspects of it aside from freeform and ATs. ppl like to create characters just for Costume contest, the character creator is a big part of this game, ppl spend hours in that thing.
to take that away from the community is like a kick in the nuts, you know how painful and time consuming it would be for subscribers and LTS'ers to buy character slots? you want to make a new toon? sick of your infernal tank and want to try something else? just buy a character slot! oh... you're a LTS... well buy it anyways!
no... just... no.
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'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.' Terry Pratchet The Thief Of Time
When I first started this game, I made a lot of very useless characters because I had no clue how powers worked together or what types of powers I should pick. It added to some considerable frustration -- and limited respecs and whatnot made it painful to experiment.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Things worth getting per character:
Power Effect Enhancers (Power Replacer effects remade)
Multiple Customizable Sidekicks
Resource limit increase
CTPs remade as devices (limit 1 per character)
Things worth purchasing that should be account wide:
Costumes
Aura unlocks
Vehicle skins
Hideout upgrades
SG Base Upgrades (whatever guild you enter will become more effective based on your unlock/purchase rate)
Yeah, it's better the way it is now with subscribers getting less and less while free players get more and more.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
This is about putting everyone on the same level, rather than having people continue to pay a subscription fee in a game that is no longer designed for a subscription plan. The point is to convert subscribers to the same pay model as everyone else, and at the same time give them something concrete for all the money they put in. Under this plan, subscribers are getting more than they paid for. Under the current plan, subscribers are getting 400 zen a month, while paying for nearly four times that amount, so they can have access to stuff that everyone has access to for free; to me, that just sounds like cheating the customer while telling them they're getting "Premium Service".
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
Balancing everything around the (limited and generally weak) ATs have broken any chance of CO ever being remotely difficult for Freeform players.
So to be frank, I think that part was a terrible decision to begin with.
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I subscribed, and later bought a LTS, because I'm an altaholic, and I wanted the unlimited free slots. Short of spending all my time grinding Questionite, how do you propose I get that as a free player?
Furthermore, I want freeforms, so the Questionite grind would be even worse.
Also, I'll have to wait until my stipend comes in to check, but isn't it 500 Zen?
Your proposed method would get me enough Zen to buy 48 slots ($300 + $15 ? 2 months = $330 ? $14 = 23.5 pairs of slots, round up for your bonus), plus my one base slot. Right now, after only 5 months, I have almost half that amount used (no, they're not all 40, only a fraction of them). It didn't really sound like your method would benefit me at all; I'd quickly use up those slots, and then need to buy more.
I'd feel "cheated" or "scammed" more under your proposal than under the current model.
@flamingbunnyman in game. Formerly @Roderick in City of Heroes.
In general, I find the free ATs to be too weak, and the purchasable ATs to be closer to the appropriate power level. There should be more choices though - 3-5 on each AT rather than 2-3, and every AT should have access to at least one dedicated survival tool (Active Defense, self heal, etc); after all, many Freeforms are loaded with them.
For example, I just started a Devastator. With no AD and no heal, the early levels, frankly, are painful. Eventually, I'll have some regen from Quick Recovery and Endorphin Rush, and Defense from Juggernaut, but that pales in comparison to dropping even a single power to take Unbreakable or Conviction.
I understand that the goal was to make Freeforms more desirable, but ATs should be better than they are.
@flamingbunnyman in game. Formerly @Roderick in City of Heroes.
It is 500 zen now but was originally 400 Cryptic Points.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
It should be simply one or two starting freefom slots but with Silver players paying for any powerset except a few base ones (but then it would require either "complete" powersets or moving utility powers into separate generic powerset).
"But freeform is selling point of this game!!!"
It is? Well, it may be planned as one but it doesn't sell enough anyway. Probably because CO as a product doesn't have enough polish and production value to justify monthly subscription unless you are an altoholic, love freeforming or/and seriously into superhero genre.
Because of quality it failed as a P2P game, then because of few other things it failed as F2P, and finally resorted to being kept afloat by cheap cash grabs.
I'm in general agreement with Smoo but I find this F2P model as a kind of utopia.
If done long time ago it could change a few things, but nothing similar can be made now.
Truth be told, I do not believe if even this kind of F2P model could save CO in the past - lack of content and attention can kill every mmo.
It's too late for CO. The best thing this game can made now is to survive - it's a real victory, given CO lack of perspectives and current shape.
(Yes, yes, Trailturtle said that the game "meets the expectations", but did anyone bothered to ask how high those expectations are? Given player number it may be as well "enough to pay for its upkeep".)
I'm not really surprised that PWE doesn't care about CO. We should be grateful that they didn't pulled NCSoft move on it. Yet.
1. I never liked the whole archetype system and always thought it was a bad move, however the problem is maybe that the game has not enough other things to offer to make money.
2. Doesn't work, if i want more character is just create e new account.
5. So what are the benefits that a LTS has over a F2P player then exactly ? Only that he keeps all his current characters, or what ? Very very bad idea.
Sure, you can say 'but if they want those things they should go subscription!'
But if there are other more important reasons why someone doesn't want to go Gold (money, sporadic playtime, preferring pay-as-you-go models), then all you've done is make the game less interesting. Which decreases the chance a Silver player will stick around and like the game enough to pay for lockboxes and other stuff.
I don't fault Cryptic too much, I think the trust in free design and the benefits that derive from offering a lot of core play free have only recently become a proven model. Like STO.
If I were doing f2p, I'd give freeform, power coloring, customization away free. I'd leverage character slots more (I'm thinking of STO, here), and focus on unlocking powersets for zen.
Free powersets are Fire, Munitions, Archery, Unarmed, Single Blade, Might.
As a player, I'd want unlocks per account, but per character is probably a better monetization.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Never know how good that might have worked.
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Sometimes you can't blame Cryptic from the choices they make. Although i do wish they fix some ******n bugs.
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The key is to draw people in, get people excited about the game, and then, very amiably, offer them lots of cool stuff they will be excited to buy.
Subscriptions, IMO, ought to be about paying monthly for access to stuff that would cost way more money to buy individually, like powersets, costumes, extra character slots, bonus respecs, and so on.
For example, if a subscription gives you access to $500 worth of 'stuff,' someone who might only want to play for a few months might go 'hey, yeah! Deal.'
While another person might want to play whenever, doesn't like subscriptions, but is willing to make more careful choices about content -- but then gets that content forever.
The problem is, I suspect too many people will simply quit the game if they aren't enjoying it rather than subscribing to get Freeform. Add to that the annoyance of switching characters between Silver and Gold more than once, and it pushes people away.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Which is why subscriptions would no longer be offered, as my post stated.
Yeah, pretty much what my idea was, so I agree. Not sure about unlocking powersets.
1. There's plenty of ways to monetize a game without requiring players to purchase a core mechanic. For examples, see nearly every other F2P game on the market.
2. People do that now with Archetypes. They're losing money on it now, they'll be losing money on it then, so nothing actually changes there. Now, if those people want all their unlocked costumes and vehicles for all their characters, they'll just have to keep all their characters on the same account. If they don't care about costumes or vehicles, then they would never have spent money on them anyway and the loss is minimal.
5. LTS players would be getting a whole bunch of stuff from the Z store for free. F2P players wouldn't be getting that.
When you wanted more slots, you would buy them just like any other player, since you would no longer be on a subscription plan. This would be the end to the dubious question of "How much is a subscription really worth?" as well as the question of who's spending more, and are the people spending more actually getting less.
Spending 15$ per month on a schedule is no different than spending 15$ a month on random Z store purchases. However, both these people are not getting the same amount for that money, and depending on who you ask it's either the subscriber or the F2P player getting screwed over. I would have immediately put everyone at the same level to leave no doubts that everyone is getting what they paid for.
It could be argued that subscribers already got what they paid for because they got temporary access to all the things they were paying for, which were the exact terms of the agreement. This is clearly the thought process behind the current company, since when you cancel your subscription you get nothing. Nothing. If you've noticed lately, their philosophy also seems to be "We'll let you keep paying, but add nothing of value to the deal... want to buy some lockboxes?"
Under my plan you actually get something when your subscription ends... a whole lot more than the nothing you would currently receive. You would be directly rewarded for all the time you had spent subscribed by effectively receiving all your money back (despite the company's side of the deal having been satisfied during that time) plus a bonus amount. Currently, you just throw more and more money into the pot and wonder if maybe someday the company will throw some new stuff in there for you.
And all the while, the game has to be balanced around Archetypes. If you hadn't heard, when a game goes F2P, it's not just to get more players in... it's because the company realized that it needs a new source of revenue, and that new source becomes their focus. You're the old source, you're still putting money in, they don't need to focus on you.
side note - you also seem to be glazing over the part where I talk about the company lawyers. As far as I'm aware, since the terms of a LTS was "for the life of the game", I wouldn't be able to end peoples' LTS anyways... so why bother talking about that?
Additional side note - for anyone who thinks I'm suggesting they do this now, there's a reason this isn't in the suggestions box section. The ship has sailed on them deciding how to implement F2P since... well... they kind of already did... a while ago. This is just me musing on how I would have done it way back then. Keep that in mind; this isn't thought of with the context of what you have right now.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
Simple as that.
One of the best Custom-Character games in the world...and theres nothing to do in it. What a shame.
I think they would have quickly gone out of business, personally. I'm sure they didn't want to go F2P... they had to, partially because the "pay for content" thing they tried with VB went so badly.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
That is, start with an archetype to get the hang of the game, then respec and rebuild your character with more fiddly stuff. Maybe every character that starts as an archetype gets a free respec to Freeform.
Then you could balance around reasonable freeforms (though I think given the way power changes have worked out, even that's a losing game in Champions, but hey).
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
The problem is they dug themselves into a hole -- they released a game with minimal content, but most people were willing to overlook that on the premise that they'd make it up afterward. Except with financials, the bosses didn't see that as reasonable -- what, people want more than we gave them, for free??
Rinse, repeat, here we are.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
But I'm not on a subscription plan. As I said, I bought a LTS so that I could have infinite character slots. Your suggestion puts a set, finite limit on my number of character slots.
Check the join date. I've had a LTS for just over 2 months. As I said in my previous post, I've only been playing for about 5 (since shortly after CoH shut down). If this game were pure F2P as you are suggesting, I would have never even considered dropping a fraction of that amount on it.
@flamingbunnyman in game. Formerly @Roderick in City of Heroes.
http://gamasutra.com/blogs/GaryDahl/20130425/191266/Irrational_Play_and_Design_The_Psychology_of_Money.php
it even has a little graph
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Back then this was before day 1 DLC was introduced. If a respectable game company were to do that back then, they would be butchered. Cryptic wasn't and thought they could get away with it. They aspired to please their potential customers by not cheating them in that way.
I missed that about Cryptic. When they used to admit they made mistakes and owned up to them. But that was when Atari owned them. Now they are adopted by a like-minded company that treats customers the way they want to.
The difference is that currently people are creating additional accounts to get more of what Cryptic gives away for free...baseline AT characters. What you are suggesting would allow people to create additional accounts in order to get what you are presenting as the primary form of monetization for free.
I really wonder about profitability if effectively unlimited numbers of freeform character slots are given away to all players.
Some really interesting ideas there.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
This is why I suggested, many, many moons ago, a system that involved an initial buy in. This is a tactic that has proved very successful in other games, so much so that Hi-Rez has actually offered a 30 dollar package that gives pretty much everything of real, gameplay effecting value away to the player.
The two ideas I tossed about were either a system where...
A: ATs were still a thing, but rather than pay for 'premium' ATs, you could outright purchase frameworks and use whatever powers in them however you wish.
-or-
B: There were no ATs, however one framework from each group was given to a starting player, probably the stuff that makes up a "prototypical" superhero, I. E. Might would be the probable choice from the Brick framework.
Ideally, my system would have likely worked like this: You could purchase individual frameworks for maybe, 5-10 bucks a pop, bundles for less, and then there would be a buy in price where you get all current frameworks and possibly even future ones, which would require a larger initial investment, but likely be the best value in the long run. Once you have a framework, you'd be able to choose to create a freeform with any slots you have and use any powers from owned frameworks.
However, this has a few caveats... Namely that it's based on the idea that regular content releases such as APs, new zones, frameworks, and various features were a regular occurrence, and required micro payments- and note I do mean MICRO payments. Of course, with this would come a retirement of subscriptions and reimbursement to previous customers, much like smoochan's idea, and some already in the game features including Vibora may have actually become pay for.
In other words, overall I think the game would have been much more successful sticking closer to a true "razor and blades" or "free lunch" model, but this is all based on the idea that they'd be able to actually manage to output a steady stream of development in order to ensure there are constantly new "blades" for people to add to their "razor."
In theory a razor and blades model that strives to provide less resistance between the player, the core product and their first addon investment is likely to be more successful than one that doesn't strive for this, however all this is still entirely dependent on whether the producer in question can continue to produce something that they can sell. As common sense as what a lot of Smoochan suggests is, even if some of it would take a little reworking, it still depends on something we don't even know Cryptic is capable of. Does the game lack content because it lacks funding, or does it lack funding because of an inability to output steady development?
Years ago I would have wagered the first. Now? Not so sure.
All this of course is pointless now, as the game is much, much too far gone in most respects, sadly. But at least it may serve as a valuable history lesson about what doesn't work, and fuel for further thought on what does.
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
Can't disagree.
Ultimately I think two of the biggest problems CO ran into with its FtP system were the scarcity of "micro" in its microtransactions and that the actual core game element, character building, was poorly monetized.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.