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F2P or F2P Hybrid: The difference COULD matter
leviathan99
Member Posts: 7,747 Arc User
When this game went Free-to-Play, it was billed as a Free-to-Play Hybrid. The fact is, you can still buy a subscription, lifetime or monthly. But the play experience between free and subscription is substantially similar and the primary value of a subscription is really the accumulation of veteran perks.
Meanwhile, my observation has been that over the past few months, nearly all F2P MMOs have taken a hit (in terms of American player activity, at least). Some have noted the Steam charts for STO and I think this probably does represent a larger trend that applies to more than just Steam users. However, it isn't just STO. It isn't just PWE games. It's virtually all F2P games from all publishers that took a hit although more buffet style F2P games took less of a hit than STO and more Korean style MMOs took more of a hit than STO.
This isn't limited to the US and PWE suffered major losses in Chinese users this past year, which might partially be due to China getting its first video game console in October.
What else happened? Well, WoW's population went back up by over 3 million players in the last two months. Subscription games saw a resurgence in general.
And games with MMO like features (such as shared world) that are not, strictly speaking, MMOs have proliferated. This includes things like Dragon Age: Inquisition launching which allows for a customized game world stored in an online cloud and multiplayer co-op. Assassin's Creed: Unity introduces multiplayer co-op to that series. Much of these launched after Delta Rising. Lines are blurring between MMO and multiplayer co-op modes in games.
My belief is that the economic downturn from 2007 to 2010 and subsequent delayed recovery for middle and working class individuals made a purely free game more appealing to people who had no spare income in the west and that these players could be subsidized by players who spent more, which promoted the rise of a particular F2P model. A relatively weak dollar added to this effect. Also, Chinese players had less buying power in the early years of the period.
However, buying power is improving for working class people in the west, the dollar is stronger, and Chinese players are experiencing rapid class mobility. Another factor that could further influence things in this direction are the EU VAT changes coming in January. Overall, the EU VAT before or after the change is going to discourage big spending by individuals (since it's a percentage of sales) and is going to favor lots of people spending a smaller flat amount on more buffet style entertainment.
I believe that actually leveraging the HYBRID side of F2P Hybrid and making Gold Gameplay less like a F2P game will benefit STO in particular since STO has the basic infrastructure for this. Some of these could be basic but immediately felt such as triple skill points and triple specialization points for subscribers, which I have, before, used a variety of cross comparison analyses to show that that the approximate value of progression in sub games is approximately 3x that of STO. (And, as a side point, queue content would need a 4x bonus stacking with the 3x bonus to match the progression of patrols or dungeon content in traditional sub MMOs.)
I believe that making massive cuts to grind and timegates across the board as part of the Gold account experience would allow STO to present a more competitive approach to capturing players who are drifting back to sub games and traditional games which have a much higher buffet value than the typical F2P MMO.
This game is ostensibly F2P Hybrid. People who select that Hybrid Subscription option are direct spenders, which it is beneficial for STO to encourage. More direct spending equals less risk for Cryptic. I am not even suggesting special content, extra cosmetic perks, upgraded vet rewards -- any of that. Simply suggesting that grind tuning for Gold players be tuned on a scale relative to grind in subscription games, adjusting cooldowns, timers, and progression values on systems like rep and specialization to feel like a subscription game for people who have a subscription of some form.
Meanwhile, my observation has been that over the past few months, nearly all F2P MMOs have taken a hit (in terms of American player activity, at least). Some have noted the Steam charts for STO and I think this probably does represent a larger trend that applies to more than just Steam users. However, it isn't just STO. It isn't just PWE games. It's virtually all F2P games from all publishers that took a hit although more buffet style F2P games took less of a hit than STO and more Korean style MMOs took more of a hit than STO.
This isn't limited to the US and PWE suffered major losses in Chinese users this past year, which might partially be due to China getting its first video game console in October.
What else happened? Well, WoW's population went back up by over 3 million players in the last two months. Subscription games saw a resurgence in general.
And games with MMO like features (such as shared world) that are not, strictly speaking, MMOs have proliferated. This includes things like Dragon Age: Inquisition launching which allows for a customized game world stored in an online cloud and multiplayer co-op. Assassin's Creed: Unity introduces multiplayer co-op to that series. Much of these launched after Delta Rising. Lines are blurring between MMO and multiplayer co-op modes in games.
My belief is that the economic downturn from 2007 to 2010 and subsequent delayed recovery for middle and working class individuals made a purely free game more appealing to people who had no spare income in the west and that these players could be subsidized by players who spent more, which promoted the rise of a particular F2P model. A relatively weak dollar added to this effect. Also, Chinese players had less buying power in the early years of the period.
However, buying power is improving for working class people in the west, the dollar is stronger, and Chinese players are experiencing rapid class mobility. Another factor that could further influence things in this direction are the EU VAT changes coming in January. Overall, the EU VAT before or after the change is going to discourage big spending by individuals (since it's a percentage of sales) and is going to favor lots of people spending a smaller flat amount on more buffet style entertainment.
I believe that actually leveraging the HYBRID side of F2P Hybrid and making Gold Gameplay less like a F2P game will benefit STO in particular since STO has the basic infrastructure for this. Some of these could be basic but immediately felt such as triple skill points and triple specialization points for subscribers, which I have, before, used a variety of cross comparison analyses to show that that the approximate value of progression in sub games is approximately 3x that of STO. (And, as a side point, queue content would need a 4x bonus stacking with the 3x bonus to match the progression of patrols or dungeon content in traditional sub MMOs.)
I believe that making massive cuts to grind and timegates across the board as part of the Gold account experience would allow STO to present a more competitive approach to capturing players who are drifting back to sub games and traditional games which have a much higher buffet value than the typical F2P MMO.
This game is ostensibly F2P Hybrid. People who select that Hybrid Subscription option are direct spenders, which it is beneficial for STO to encourage. More direct spending equals less risk for Cryptic. I am not even suggesting special content, extra cosmetic perks, upgraded vet rewards -- any of that. Simply suggesting that grind tuning for Gold players be tuned on a scale relative to grind in subscription games, adjusting cooldowns, timers, and progression values on systems like rep and specialization to feel like a subscription game for people who have a subscription of some form.
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I agree with much of what you said, it would be more like the f2p module that story follows..and would make subbing a value to its player base... But let's see what happens ..
I'm still hoping for some real customer service..lol
Agreed...totally with your argument..
As for changing STOs F2P model that ship may have already sailed, if they were going to implement a radical benefit system for subscribers it should have been implemented when they first introduced F2P, it may be too late now.
While it is certainly appealing to subscribers who'll finally be getting a suitable and I'll add deserved, reward for their contributions, how would the the F2P membership react? Personally I have no problem with this, but many would regard it as Pay to Win and it could cause a serious uproar in the forums and silent mass exodus from the game.
And it should be noted that while giving Time and experience bonuses to subscribers seems like a good idea it will also bring subscribers to that boredom at endgame period between releases that much faster and at a rate which developers are never going to be able to keep up with.
By immensely slowing down the rate of experience gain or progression and to "give it back" by charging for it is horrible and sets up a bad precedent. By allowing players to speed up or bypass some of the grind only by subscribing only encourages creating worse grind and worse timegates in order to sell gold subscriptions.
Cryptic needs to either add value to lifetime and gold subscriptions (I mean real value, not just sticking a Talaxian skin into lifetime subscriptions), or lower the cost if they want to sell more subscriptions.
This game is F2P, everything is your choice, period.
No hybrids, vat means nothing, etc, etc.......
Well, bonuses could be designed to "kick off" at a certain point.
So, for example:
Golds get a buff applied. 3x XP for the first 150k XP.
This buff gets reapplied every Sunday.
So if they're outpacing a spec level a week, they get back on the same slow cycle as everyone else. But they can get that first spec level per week in much less time played and move on to other things.
For, say, rep and crafting? Howabout access to a second daily project for each rep and R&D category. Keeps them logging in daily (and it's not an increase in total slots) but the progress is less of a slog.
For dilithium boosts, if they gain dilithium at a faster rate but have the same refinement cap, they just move onto doing things they want to do a bit faster.
For item upgrades, maybe just a passive quality chance improvement and crit chance applied to each use of a tech upgrade.
If you want something that might be simpler and "fairer"?
When Gold, all bonus weekend (and seasonal? including featured episode events?) events are on all the time (does not stack with bonus weekend events). In this scenario, the free player gets the EXACT SAME THING but is limited to schedules events whereas someone who is Gold basically has all of the events (bonus XP, DOff bonus, mining event, etc.) running for them 24-7 and has more freedom to play. (Maybe toss Q into the Captain's Table.)
I believe it is related to the oversaturation of MMOs and Co-Op games in general. More games have been created at this point in time than ever. The blurring of the lines between release, beta, and alpha. Customers are able to pay money to get "Early Alpha Access", which basically means there is a market for people who do not care about how complete a game is, as long as something is there.
With more games blurring the line between "finished" and "continually in development", much like MMORPGs operate, even if the game in question is an off-line single player game, this has resulted in further oversaturation of the market, and making competition even more brutal as companies try to out-do one another to get the players they need to continue their projects and ensure their long-term success.
In short, customer trends for online games (whether single or multiplayer) is showing that players are willing to pay more for less. Game companies are taking advantage of this by hurting customer faith in things like f2p by creating 'pump and dump' games in which a company will throw a bunch of resources into getting people to pay more now for promises (or implied promises) of even greater rewards once a game is finished.
Of course, then that game never quite gets finished, or when it does, it is purposefully made lackluster with the bare minimum effort applied to it.
Over all, this I think has helped turn players toward traditional subscription-based models, where they know what they are getting, and companies are being willing to turn away f2p customers as a result of a desire for a higher quality product, and the idea that their product is 'good enough' to warrant a subscription-based model alone. By using a subscription based model or traditional one-time fees of fair value, they are not offering potential promises. They are offering exactly what they are selling.
For players burned by Kickstarter projects or other crowd-funded projects, Steam greenlight indie development, or what have you... the idea of traditional business models may be a breath of fresh air.
I also believe the hit the industry took is related to the tech bubble we currently reside in. I posted something some time ago that had predictions the tech industry would be seeing some painful transitions as the bubble will either burst violently, or will be steadily deflated by the government.
The government is now more willing to interfere in the market, and has been paying careful attention to the tech bubble, and devaluing certain stocks that simply are not worth that much. They are warning more shareholders to stay away from tech companies who are using misleading tactics, and it is possible this regulation has forced tech companies to rethink their business strategies.
It would appear (as of now) that the government is attempting to slowly deflate the tech bubble. The hits we see this year may be related to that, along with all the other points previously made. I do not think it is one single reason, but a combination of reasons that likely are interconnected to one another.
A subscriber/lifetimer subscribes and pays full price in the store. The 1000 extra refined dlilithium that takes a day and the 500 Zen stipend is not worth the subscription price. A lifetime, after time, will pay for itself $5 in value at a time (about 5 years) in stipends but a gold account never will. Argue the stipend is great if you must but in 2 months of premium time, I have the same ship that you can get "free" in 6 months for your stipend and I spent only $30 while paying the same amount for everything we may have bought in common during that same time.
It may indeed be hybrid but the ones cheated the most are the ones to pay to play using it.
Like others mentioned, a permanent 3x XP and EC boost, and reduced Cooldown between queues and certain other timegated components (Daily Rep and R&D down to 12 hours, for example) would make the 300 USD subscription far more worthwhile.
Give Gold non-LTS permanent (for the duration of the paid membership) 2x XP gain across Normal, Advanced, and Elite over the standard, to help sell pay-as-needed memberships. While no cooldown reduction to timegated components, double XP would go a long way and actually make even a 15/mo Gold worthwhile.
On one hand I like it, on the other I feel like I could not defend it against a mob of angry Freepers .
Now I asked myself why that is ?!
Was it because I have surrendered to the thought that my Lifer sub perks were "meh" ?
Or was it because a long time ago I made the choice to choose the "meh" because back then the content was great -- and thus I'm having trouble equating a small relief on the "sanctions" that the OP suggests with the awesome content that convinced me to go Lifetime in the first year of STO ?
... this could be just me but I wouldn't go Lifer today, neither with or without the suggestions in the OP ... . They are a nice try tho ...
Well, forget about lifer, I just think the $15 on a subscription should be the best use of the first $15 anyone would spend on STO in a given month.
I think a part of the problem is that everybody got in the game of viewing Gold in terms of lifer status. If Cryptic took hybrid at all seriously the way other Western games did, they'd discontinue selling further lifetime accounts and focus on selling more subs.
Heck, I was thinking the other day that along with some value boosters to gold, I'd look at:
- Capping off existing time prepaid and LTS that include stipend as "Legacy Gold"
- Rolling out a new Gold tier without a stipend
- Lowering the "No Stipend"/"New Gold" LTS price and and reducing the monthly gold fee down to $9.99
- Boosting the value of gold with baked in grind reduction
Maybe they will add it when desperation sets in after the anniversary. It would be a nice perk for subscribers and lifers.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
This right here I never got. If someone in the past had told me I was asked full AAA retail price for a single item in an online game in about ten to fifteen years I would've shaken my head in disbelief. Yet, today, we have people spending hundreds and thousands of dollars like gambling addicts for non existant, virtual items in a severly lacking game and they are happy with it. Just so they can grind the same old grind a little faster for more full game priced ships. Doubleyou-tee-eff.
When the game was P2P, but you had full access to everyting I still got the "gaming world". That's what I wa used to and what I am willing to pay for such a game. Since F2P hit I haven't spent anything, and I never again will spent anything on this game - obviously, I am not the target audience anymore
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I honestly think they were trying for something LIKE that with dilithium before DR by frontloading so much into things like Dyson and having marks convert to dilithium and with the Foundry daily boost. Dilithium has a lot of frontloaded mechanisms. Rep marks also has a lot of frontloading mechanisms so that you're encouraged to devote a bit of daily playtime to one thing and if you play for more than a half hour or hour, you get lots of unstructured options for continued play.
DR broke that, particularly after the November 21st patch.
The last line there still rubs me wrong, even if I know I might be wrong .
I guess it's in my nature to dislike change in longstanding "fixtures" -- in our case it being everyone advancing at an equal pace .
It does not help that I consider the current "beyond lvl 60" grind to be a joke when I look around and see nothing to grind for .
After all, will finishing that grind make one more ISA more enjoyable or one more ANR any less fail proof ?
The "barrel roll" bit is neat and somewhat useful .
Across 17 toons I like to switch between , that's all I can hope for .
So my XP bar does not move forward ?
Guess what Cryptic , I don't care .
Sad but true .
... sorry, guess I'm not helping ... -- I suppose my mind is wired in a object -> roads toward -> incentives kind of way . So far the 'object' is nearly non existent , thus discussing the bettering of the incentives toward it ... mildly moot .
that 500zenn bonuse could be tripled and not mean much those major bonuses would not mean much id agree on the time gate having a bonus if all time gate features cut in half that would mean something removing the dilithium refinement cap would be the most logical of anything for subscribing to be rewarded for more playing the game is heavly dependent on refinement cap so that would be the most logical
most inportanly the issue is progress can now be instant making the pay to win the biggest issue in sto ie in a single day 1 or 2 million dilithium can be spent and not do much and with the fact of refinement cap even having 12 on that a week is not much and to actually pay up every pay to rush option in game is not instantly completed with 1000bucks cash but still a 1000 bucks is about a year of progress in 1 day that's a massive advantage to spending massive compaired to say just before session 9 that had nothing to just pay up big and complete this option is a big game killer as its like a credit card number is like a cheat unlock and no one who likes to keep playing games wants a game full of cheaters and no one not a cheater likes cheaters
And this is where it always falls apart:
A Gold Subscription is a Gold Subscription regardless of LTS or monthly.
When you stint a monthly subscriber because he can't put down $300, but can pay more than that over the many months that he plays you divide your support and this is where you lose the battle.
I have a lifetime. Really, I think Cryptic is nuts to continue offering lifetimes. Most of their competitors capped those off when going from sub to F2P.
Gold is gold is gold.
That said, I think it would be wise to phase out offering gold with a stipend. Grandfather it for prepaid gametime or LTS who signed up while a stipend was offered. But remove it from future sales and make future sales cheaper and focus on how to make Gold valuable without a stipend.
The idea of a sub still caters to a particular kind of player and sub games have had a huge and rapid resurgence. STO stands in a better position than most to capitalize on that since STO is, in theory, a F2P Sub Hybrid. The infrastructure exists.
Find out what people like least about F2P and, focusing on that, make the sub something that appeals to players who would rather sub.
I think time gates and content corralling are a big part of it.
The end of F2P and return of the sub fee...?
It certainly is a bit more extreme than the increased emphasis on hybrid I'd suggested.
I ... I can't even think up the spin for that one , except maybe ... : "errr... ISA ... one ... more ... time ... 4 moniz ?!? ". Seriously ... the mind just boggles ... -- which seems to be one more reason not to take the Glassdoor quip seriously . However just on the off chance that it's real ... -- to me it just displays how much in the dark the employees them selfs might be in regards to the company they work for .
I could absolutely see leaning back on the Gold option as a way to limit some types of purchases.
In that sense, it could be viewed as a sale or promotional value.
DCUO gives you infinite lockbox opening rights without keys for as long as you are subbed, for example.
And it's actually fairly simple to run a cost-benefit analysis on that type of push to re-emphasize a sub.
Right now, every lockbox ship generates maybe around $300 average in revenue but less if you estimate the value of all of the content, right?
Well, if infinite lockbox opening for $15 would get Cryptic over 20 months of subscription a year across multiple players for every one lockbox whale they have now or at least 2 extra Gold players per year, infinite lockbox opening would work out as a gold perk. They'd just need to stop selling lifetime subs prior to doing this.
I just can't see a sub being required.
What they could do is this:
1) Discontinue offering LTS.
2) Offer unlimited lockbox opening privileges to anyone who prepays for at least 3 months of gametime at $45. But we'll be conservative and make that 4 months at $60, prepaid for the perk, to account for grandfathered lifers and the like.
If you think you would generate 2 subs for every 1 lockbox ship awarded under the current system, the perk makes sense and would result in a net profit increase.
If you think you would generate 8 subs for every 1 lockbox ship awarded under the current system in a given month, it makes sense just to make it a regular gold perk without worrying about amount of prepaid time. And you would see a net profit increase.
People could still buy keys at a low rate if they prefered to, naturally. It remains truly F2P. It would just be a better and less risky F2P model.
Can you trade lockbox content in DCUO?