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STO new payment plan thoughts.
jarfaru
Posts: 91 Arc User
Doesn't anyone think STO's new payment plan would really help Champions? They got rid of the monthly payment plan for new players if i'm reading it right.
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That doesn't look like it would be good for CO.
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Formerly @Seschat pre PWEmerger. @Seschat on the Titan boards.
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So I guess we already have two versions of this, one being FF slots, and the only other one that makes sense for what you get, LTS.
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I'm not even sure that STO's new "payment plan" will help STO, never mind CO.
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I'd have to say that FF slots...are not as good as the deal the thing STO is doing. FF cost a lot of money. While the package STO is offering is basically the price of one month of subbing. But, at least, STO players do not lose any benifits they got when their sub time runs out. If CO did the same thing, they would make it so that a character that got such a package bought for them would never lose the benefits. But, because of how CO is, they would have to make it so the package only benefits the toon that used/received the package. Of course, the package couldn't gave the free character slot though. Though, at the same time, switching to this deal would mean they'd have to leave character slots open if a gold sub goes back to a silver sub (instead of locking them as it currently does).
But, that would be how they'd have to do it to continue receiving money. Overall, I'd say it is a bad idea, simply because there are some players that sub, despite having only one or two characters. Thus, those players, would than spend only one sub worth of money on one purchase, and thus never pay for any more sub time. Which would mean less money for CO.
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"Champions Online, you just get more!" (tm)
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CO, on the other hand, gives you several C-Store costume sets, eight more characters, the monthly Sub Rewards (which can't even be purchased later, unless you go LTS), and of course the aforementioned stipend, vet rewards, increased Q refinement cap, VIP Lounge, and the higher Resources cap. Also, there are several ATs, as well as the whole Freeform thing, that would have to be purchased separately but are included in Gold status here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I recall there are only a couple of extra Trek races made available for free to subscribers, and of course all career paths are open to every player - right now I'm pushing through a Temporal Recruit who's a Tellarite engineer who mostly flies escorts; he recently hit lvl 40, and upgraded to USS Pegasus, a Tier 6 Bajoran Interceptor escort. (Doing that mostly for the Dil bonus the other toons on the account can collect when he finishes a story arc, so I can swap it for Zen and buy that Elite Starter Pack.
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Raging Princess Blaze + Model 286 + Red Inferno + Burgundy Beetle
In order for this to work well for CO, they'd have to follow suit and de-emphasize monthly subscriptions. While it'd be healthier for the quality of the game if they did, CO probably doesn't have enough whales in its playerbase to sustain itself without those monthly subs to feed on.
Kinda what my point was.
Exactly.
Also, like I said before, the services bundle in STO stacks with the benefits you get for Subbing, it doesn't replace them.
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For example the Gold Costume Set Bundle that unlocks all the costume sets you would get with a sub, the price being the sum of all those sets with a discount.
Gold Archetype Bundle, unlock all ATs, price again is the price of all of them with a discount.
Gold FF Slot Bundle. 8 FF slots for 300$. ...okay yeah no any sane person would get LTS instead. Maybe 4 slots for 150$? Mmmm... 4 slots for 100$ maaaaybe...
By splitting the things up into several bundles to mitigate that big whopping cost some it could work. Except that last one...that one's a hard sell cause it keeps creeping towards LTS price.
EDIT - WAIT... I just realized there are 25 ATs in the store and at 1150 zen each that's like $287.50 so even with a discount even that's creeping up on LTS... fudgin heck you just get too much value with a sub for this to work.
Maybe if they were split into small groups of ATs in the bundle or something... this is too hard I give up >:T
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See the issue here is that as you get closer to the "right amount" for something like this, the closer you get to the price of LTS which makes the offer look ridiculous by comparison.
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AGREED. I . . . can't think of way something like this would work for CO . . .
The account bank slots and retrain tokens are directly equivalent to CO things. The character slot... not so much since STO doesn't have an equivalent of freeform. I suppose that it'd come with a hideout token though. Thing is CO doesn't do inventory and bank slots the same way. You spend G to buy personal bank slots, not Zen. Closest would be to give the player an account unlock for a multi-dimensional bag.
Also, the concept of bridge officers is most similar to sidekicks, but... sidekicks don't have their own UI slot(which you can have over a dozen of), and they don't hang around as permanent party members.
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Selling an "AT Pass" that gives players access to every single AT (past and future) would very much be an appealing "peace of mind" purchase. What I mean is that, for $10, you can take a chance on something you might absolutely hate or grow bored with, but for $50, you'd be able to try them all out before finally settling in with 1 or 2 that you enjoy playing. You'd also get the feeling of owning an upgraded account, despite being silver. This does a lot for keeping you with the game and thus, likely to spend on more things that are probably better moneymakers for Cryptic, such as lockbox keys, periodic subbing, extra account slots to make all those ATs you now have, and eventually maybe even LTS.
Cryptic should have cleaned up CO's sub model when the game went F2P. It's kind of stupid that some options aren't available for purchase or the dumb things done to try and encourage subs. Especially since Gold subs look like garbage when you see what the one time purchase of an LTS offers.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
I think you just answered your own question. Cryptic was probably watching revenue fall off at the time Atari bailed out, but it didn’t really make a difference, because PWE was going to impose their monetization system regardless. “F2P MMOs with lockbox monetization” is their stock in trade, and CO and STO were perfectly positioned to adapt to that system. (That PWE hammered NW, which had a more roguelike structure at the start, into in MMO is a story for another day.)
The window of opportunity is long past closed, but it’s turned out to be a blessing in disguise. To the accountants, an LTS purchase looks no different than a sufficiently large Zen binge: An influx of revenue, followed most often by a period of zero revenue. Subs provide a steady cash flow, and with such a small population, maintaining that cash flow is vital. Figuring out the value proposition of free vs. sub vs. lifetime gets more complicated for the player, unfortunately.
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I tried breaking the package down into smaller pieces and it still doesn't work.
No thanks. As a seasoned suit I'll gamble on them buying a few ATs rather than just handing them the whole thing.
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As a seasoned suit, you should also be aware that people love bundles and deals, and are more likely to buy one with a lot of perceived value even if they only want a few things from said bundle. The rest is kinda like, "I never would have bought these things individually, but it's nice to have it at a greatly discounted price along with the things I actually did want."
Besides, the permanent nature of the theoretical AT bundle is the invisible hook it comes with. If it makes a player more likely to stick around because they have a permanent account unlock that continues to give them things over time (each new AT being added to their list of options) I'd say it's more than worth the perceived loss from "handing them the whole thing."
Exactly. 200$, not 50$. As the suit I feel it's much less of a gamble to take the 200 bucks than to bet on someone spending 200 bucks on separate purchases, especially because LTS players are likely to become whales anyways since now they're heavily invested in the game. All ATs for 50$ doesn't have the same effect.
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Edit: I should also note that players are essentially a form of content. Even if something like a $50 AT Pass attracts players who buy it and nothing else ever again, that's still more players in the game which makes it appear healthier overall.
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Current monthly subscribers can keep their sub for however long they want, but if they miss one month then they are done, too.
Now they know their numbers and maybe the game was literally nothing but players that had subscribed for a month, lifers, and people that have never subbed (but might, for one month, at some point in the future), but by cutting out the option for people that may have been subbing here and there in order to work towards the veteran rewards it seems to me that they are cutting off a revenue stream.
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Over whatever length of time, of course they are. I mean, even if someone pays $300 for a lifetime sub that means that a regular sub would start "wasting money" after month 20.
But some people also seem incapable of just saving $15 every month and then springing for the lifetime (playing F2P in the meanwhile), or just having it saved up to begin with when they discover the game.
So they keep on "wasting money" in a way that works for them and that should work for Cryptic.
But if they just aren't out there, if, like I said for STO, the game is made up entirely of people that are lifers, people that subbed for one month only, and people that have yet to sub at all, then maybe this works for them.
But with CO it seems that I see a greater number of people, or at least a greater percentage of the players, bragging about how they have gotten this and that without spending a single dollar.
If they can find a few more ways to get a dollar out of a few more people, then I guess I am okay with that.
And if the game loses a few of those people that haven't and will not spend any money here, then no one should mourn the loss.
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My personal reasons for staying on this monthly model is that I really don't notice paying just under $10 a month and $200/$300 would have been too big a chunk at once to justify it to myself. I didn't save up and wait until I had the necessary funds for an LTS because I wanted to play as a subscriber then and there and not wait months to do so.
Obviously I have paid far, far more for my sub in the long run than an LTS but I was fine by that as I loved the game and didn't begrudge it. I also have had periods where I wasn't very active and didn't play much for a month or two here and there. What kept me subscribing during these hiatus was the monthly gold bonus items (I had already achieved max vet rewards by that time).
I haven't only paid for my sub though. I've bought a lot of Zen over the years.
I know many people in-game that follow this model. It's not as uncommon as you may think, Jon.
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A player like you won't be heavily impacted by the new system, then. Like lifers, you will hit the cap for number of character slots, but otherwise, your sub can continue as before.
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