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A thought on metrics, playtime, business, and the summer event
leviathan99
Member Posts: 7,747 Arc User
The long and short of it is that playtime is used heavily in F2P games because of its impact on two things:
- It is an estimator of marketshare in lieu of actual marketshare data; the trajectory of playtime both in volume and in average per player should be useful in predicting stock value.
- There is a wealth of research indicating that increased playtime yields more sales conversions. I had some skepticism about this before and while I think this relationship could be better understood and that explanations for it are overconfident (I don't doubt it happens but the accepted reasoning seems inadequate). I accept that on a VERY large level, more playtime yields noticeable sales increases. Where I am more skeptical is that I haven't seen truly GRANULAR analysis and I think there could be nuances to this and why this happens beyond playtime adjusting perception of real money value in a game environment. I'm also not as sure whether the same forces drive repeat sales or if repeat sales go up with playtime but for different psychological reasons or if there's a burnout risk.
Alright. Now, let's talk about what a noticeable sales increase means. A reality of F2P is that no more than 5% of players will consistently spend during the game's healthy lifecycle (caveat: I suspect spenders are the last ones to leave which would drive an increase in conversion rate). Not ever more than 5%, under existing F2P models (said with a caveat because I think a freemium model could be designed with better conversion figures). Sometimes 2%. You can try to get more money out of that small percentage of players or you can try to get more total players to increase the size of that 2-5%. (And let's also be clear, "whales" are a smaller subset of that 2-5%. The 2-5% includes you if you spend money at all.)
Okay... Now here's my thinking:
- STO is technically freemium or "hybrid" F2P although I doubt any developer would really say they put much stock on the subscription option aside from as a way of honoring gametime people had purchased and lifetime accounts. And I think it would be absolutely fair to say that the lifer stipends are not trivial. I have no trouble believing that millions of dollars in stipend credit have been issued, that allowing that credit to work on the dilithium exchange may have been contested internally, and that the lack of a lifetime stipend package indicates that it's probably not the best deal for Cryptic but was about honoring a commitment. The point: these guys (even Geko) are not reptiles.
- Guys at Cryptic (at Rivera's level and above especially) really have their head in the game of F2P design and are not PASSIVELY implementing a F2P approach but are parsing data. When you laugh at the metrics, you're laughing at, essentially, Al's whole job and the reason he has to leave the house in the morning. And this data and the theory behind it are actively being parsed at Cryptic. They would not pay management what they pay them to sit around and be the face of a static policy. Experimentation is encouraged up to a point and results are rewarded. But data-driven is the international language of this stuff and data is what Rivera needs to hand to PWE to justify what he's doing when something isn't working and to get resources to enhance the things that are working.
Now... That said, I think it's very important how data is being collected because it drives decisions. And I think we would get better decisions if they boxed off playtime in categories by behavior, looked at playtime activities... and TYPE of conversion. There's some obvious stuff here. Roleplay sells costumes and it sells specific kinds of costumes. (Okay. That sounds bad.) Obviously certain
types of roleplay drive specific costume purchases and roleplay is an an unhealthy state if people are just buying the sexy outfits. You can get granular with this. My expectation is that type of activity drives type of conversion and maybe even rate. I know they do some of this but I think it's important to look at. And it's frustrating because I'm speaking to multiple audiences and some of you get touchy (pro or con) the minute monetization comes up.
And the big thing here, what would be relevant to a lot of you for reasons I'm holding back on fully explaining, is that I think some of the data Cryptic is using needs asterisks on it. One of those is that they need to separate TS (time spent) pre- and post-sales conversion. I think one issue the game has is that it feels like a fairly good value to free players and that spending money heightens frustration with it. That's not ideal.
Spenders need to be exempted more from some of the pressure tactics like the Summer event. (Ie. something like an extra two weeks on timed event for gold or a lower project completion price.) I'm not suggesting golds get C-Store ships cheaper (and I'm using the "gold" term broadly because I'd like to see the sub model change to maybe award gold status automatically to players who spend $X in a given month so we can be a big enough group collectively to study). I think the pressure of the sales pitch needs to be tailored to the player, their conversion history, etc.
The issue of people saving up seasonal rep currency from year to year MATTERS a LOT when Cryptic is trying to squeeze conversions out of time spent. The squeeze has no torque if the time spent isn't fresh. At the same time, if a regular customer gets confused and walks out the door of your store having underpaid you by a quarter, you don't have security tackle them in the parking lot.
I think if you separate Time Spent targets by spending level, there would be better incentive TO spend, design would improve, and you wouldn't have spending customers feeling pressured or getting frustrated that they spend money on a game that constantly creates "time drives" to spend more. On a certain level, the design philosophy of time vs. money has to have some real weight, a real seat of the table beyond just Risian Pearls for Lobi at an astronomically non-ideal "I've got some spare currency to burn off from the economy" rate.
And I think better design comes from relaxing the severity of "time spent campaigns" on proven spenders or current spenders. Heck, maybe one for each. Like... Maybe have veteran status (ie. proven spending history) unlock cheaper event projects (lowered participation target) and current gold status (which, again, I think they really ought to hand out for free for 30 days with qualifying ZEN purchase) could trigger you to receive bonus event currency.
But I think it starts by weighting and segregating the Time Spent data better.
(And I say this all as a newly minted MBA. Go me.)
- It is an estimator of marketshare in lieu of actual marketshare data; the trajectory of playtime both in volume and in average per player should be useful in predicting stock value.
- There is a wealth of research indicating that increased playtime yields more sales conversions. I had some skepticism about this before and while I think this relationship could be better understood and that explanations for it are overconfident (I don't doubt it happens but the accepted reasoning seems inadequate). I accept that on a VERY large level, more playtime yields noticeable sales increases. Where I am more skeptical is that I haven't seen truly GRANULAR analysis and I think there could be nuances to this and why this happens beyond playtime adjusting perception of real money value in a game environment. I'm also not as sure whether the same forces drive repeat sales or if repeat sales go up with playtime but for different psychological reasons or if there's a burnout risk.
Alright. Now, let's talk about what a noticeable sales increase means. A reality of F2P is that no more than 5% of players will consistently spend during the game's healthy lifecycle (caveat: I suspect spenders are the last ones to leave which would drive an increase in conversion rate). Not ever more than 5%, under existing F2P models (said with a caveat because I think a freemium model could be designed with better conversion figures). Sometimes 2%. You can try to get more money out of that small percentage of players or you can try to get more total players to increase the size of that 2-5%. (And let's also be clear, "whales" are a smaller subset of that 2-5%. The 2-5% includes you if you spend money at all.)
Okay... Now here's my thinking:
- STO is technically freemium or "hybrid" F2P although I doubt any developer would really say they put much stock on the subscription option aside from as a way of honoring gametime people had purchased and lifetime accounts. And I think it would be absolutely fair to say that the lifer stipends are not trivial. I have no trouble believing that millions of dollars in stipend credit have been issued, that allowing that credit to work on the dilithium exchange may have been contested internally, and that the lack of a lifetime stipend package indicates that it's probably not the best deal for Cryptic but was about honoring a commitment. The point: these guys (even Geko) are not reptiles.
- Guys at Cryptic (at Rivera's level and above especially) really have their head in the game of F2P design and are not PASSIVELY implementing a F2P approach but are parsing data. When you laugh at the metrics, you're laughing at, essentially, Al's whole job and the reason he has to leave the house in the morning. And this data and the theory behind it are actively being parsed at Cryptic. They would not pay management what they pay them to sit around and be the face of a static policy. Experimentation is encouraged up to a point and results are rewarded. But data-driven is the international language of this stuff and data is what Rivera needs to hand to PWE to justify what he's doing when something isn't working and to get resources to enhance the things that are working.
Now... That said, I think it's very important how data is being collected because it drives decisions. And I think we would get better decisions if they boxed off playtime in categories by behavior, looked at playtime activities... and TYPE of conversion. There's some obvious stuff here. Roleplay sells costumes and it sells specific kinds of costumes. (Okay. That sounds bad.) Obviously certain
types of roleplay drive specific costume purchases and roleplay is an an unhealthy state if people are just buying the sexy outfits. You can get granular with this. My expectation is that type of activity drives type of conversion and maybe even rate. I know they do some of this but I think it's important to look at. And it's frustrating because I'm speaking to multiple audiences and some of you get touchy (pro or con) the minute monetization comes up.
And the big thing here, what would be relevant to a lot of you for reasons I'm holding back on fully explaining, is that I think some of the data Cryptic is using needs asterisks on it. One of those is that they need to separate TS (time spent) pre- and post-sales conversion. I think one issue the game has is that it feels like a fairly good value to free players and that spending money heightens frustration with it. That's not ideal.
Spenders need to be exempted more from some of the pressure tactics like the Summer event. (Ie. something like an extra two weeks on timed event for gold or a lower project completion price.) I'm not suggesting golds get C-Store ships cheaper (and I'm using the "gold" term broadly because I'd like to see the sub model change to maybe award gold status automatically to players who spend $X in a given month so we can be a big enough group collectively to study). I think the pressure of the sales pitch needs to be tailored to the player, their conversion history, etc.
The issue of people saving up seasonal rep currency from year to year MATTERS a LOT when Cryptic is trying to squeeze conversions out of time spent. The squeeze has no torque if the time spent isn't fresh. At the same time, if a regular customer gets confused and walks out the door of your store having underpaid you by a quarter, you don't have security tackle them in the parking lot.
I think if you separate Time Spent targets by spending level, there would be better incentive TO spend, design would improve, and you wouldn't have spending customers feeling pressured or getting frustrated that they spend money on a game that constantly creates "time drives" to spend more. On a certain level, the design philosophy of time vs. money has to have some real weight, a real seat of the table beyond just Risian Pearls for Lobi at an astronomically non-ideal "I've got some spare currency to burn off from the economy" rate.
And I think better design comes from relaxing the severity of "time spent campaigns" on proven spenders or current spenders. Heck, maybe one for each. Like... Maybe have veteran status (ie. proven spending history) unlock cheaper event projects (lowered participation target) and current gold status (which, again, I think they really ought to hand out for free for 30 days with qualifying ZEN purchase) could trigger you to receive bonus event currency.
But I think it starts by weighting and segregating the Time Spent data better.
(And I say this all as a newly minted MBA. Go me.)
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Was a nice read, no meaningful comment so far.
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Personally, I find myself spending less because of the caps set by Cryptic. I am one of those few players that likes to collect lots of different ship models, but the fact that I am limited to how many I can have just makes me want to not spend money on newer ships or spend time events where I could get a newer ship. The total amount of ship slots a player can purchase should be the total amount of ships attainable in the game from the beginning up to the point of purchase.
I do like your idea of customizing the sales pitch between the different type of players. Gold have slight payable advantages over Silver, so long as it is not excessive. I may also be one of those few who do enjoy using different costumes as well, so marketing to me things that I like in-game would be much more influential in me spending money on the game than marketing me an item I am not interested in. And though bundles can be great money savers for players, the bundles really shouldn't exceed more than $100, which, when it does, is more of a deter-er for me to spend money on the game. Not everyone, even whales, have that kind of money...especially when they do promotions that lower the price, but still keep it above $100.
First I will comment on this. Don't be judgemental about other people's role play. If they want to do ERP, there is nothing wrong with it. It doesn't affect you. Just like if you like to be spanked or tied up or to do those things to your partner in the bedroom, there is nothing wrong with it. It isn't anyone else's business when it is kept private so leave it alone. Sex is a driving force in real life, more for some people than others. That it is equally expressed in a virtual environment should be expected and understood.
And to presume RP is based on buying outfits is ridiculous. It is a non sequiter. However it makes a good segue. You want to attribute certain purchases to certain behavior, the problem is you're basing that on nothing. You haven't interviewed or polled the purchasers of those items, nor followed them as they use them.
So onto the topic of metrics, the fundamental problem with the metrics is that they are based on flawed assumptions and a lack of knowledge of the actual players reason behind their habits.
Personally, I don't spend more the more I feel forced to grind. I spent more on this game back in the Atari days than I ever did since PWE took over, when all my characters were maxed out and, by some estimations, had nothing to do. I spent more time in game doing whatever I wanted to, not working on a grind.
I am even less likely to purchase things now knowing full well that my purchases have been significantly devalued in the T5-T6 change (and especially with how they did the Pathfinder's release), and are likely to be devalued further in the future. The handful of ships I've bought since DR have been purely for the trait. I don't care about flying them and enjoying the ship itself now, because there is no telling when they will be devalued again. I can still enjoy the ship itself, but it is no longer the driving force behind the purchase for me due to the way the game changed. The trait at least I expect to retain its value for a longer time and offer value across a good part of my alts.
I don't speak for anyone but me, however the problem is spending time in game doesn't translate to a purchase. I didn't purchase more because I spent more time in game, I purchased more because I liked the game. And because I liked the game I spent more time in it. Trying to force me to spend more time in it to grind may work, but it is highly likely to make me spend less, as is definitely the case with DR.
Further, there is a serious corporate disconnect in their product to take something that was successful with out a significant grind component to it, and then go and add that. It isn't what sold their product, why change it so fundamentally?
The subject of events themselves are another problem. You want to encourage people to do the event, understandable. But, if metrics are saying people would rather spend time doing something else, that isn't a sign to increase grind or the requirement in the event itself, that is a sign that something with the event is lacking in its ability to draw players in.
Metrics are data and are valuable when used properly. But without looking deeper and understanding them and the sentiment behind the players making those metrics, they are worthless.
It's all well and good to declaim this stuff in the relative distance from the classroom to the boardroom, but the ugly reality is that all too often the people who gather and intepret the data are overruled by the big shots above them who choose to see it in a different light. Having experienced this many, many times in the past, I'd like to raise a few counter points.
The key word in this is, of course, should. It has proven to be of less value in that regard, especially when aggregate playtime doesn't conform to return on investment per player. While I concede your other point (that increased playtime = more sales conversions) you are right on the money that all the current reasoning is utterly inadqueate and yet adamantly confident.
Yet if players don't spent ENOUGH then the additional play time merely drives additional costs. When LoR launched and lag forced them to expend dollars on upgrading the servers, a good deal of that was driven by F2P members who did not convert much of anything in terms of sales. In the long run, without harder metrics to pinpoint what longer playtime concepts actually correlate to increased spending the mantra alone has sunk more than one MMO.
Pretty much exactly. Burnout risk is the primary driver of inaccurate metrics, because burnout is a psychological and environmental device that can be aggravated by forces external to gameplay.
I would say 5% is ... generous. Achieving that sort of rate for a short time span may be very possible, but over the course of a year I would say 2% to 3% is more accurate, if only because STO offers so many ways to bypass actually spending money (the aforementioned ZEN pensions injecting 'free' dilithium into the game and allowing Zen movement to pure F2P types with lots of time on their hands raises its head here.)
Whales would actually require their own metrics, but I would also suspect that whales make up a large portion of the actual dollars expended. A single whale player I know drops -- literally every month -- upwards of $500 on this game, and for a while I would drop $100 a month or more. Anyone with lots of highly disposable income will hardly notice the effect -- I end up paying more for my daughter's cell phone bill than I do STO!
It is also a very clever way to allow injection of ZEN into the F2P economy and 'prove' that you can truly get everything in the game for absolutely free by way of grinding, which is not the case in many other F2P experiences (SWTOR, looking at you here).
Something the people who mock metrics tend to miss the point of. I would appreciate it you expanded on this further, however.
At the end of the day, we still don't know how much economic control Cryptic maintains over STO and how much is driven by PWE. So while I agree with you, I haven't seen a lot of experimentation in anything but attempting to drive further sales. Is that what you mean?
It is a touchy subject because people continue to want to believe in a free lunch, and the old, tired canard about customer satisfaction. In everything from clothing to church, things are being monetized, but people dislike the idea of it happening in a game because it 'limits their fun.
The asterisks needed are more than the ones you lay out, and I'll say it if you won't -- there are certain portions of the playerbase that Cryptic is completely ignoring because the metrics indicate they aren't viable for conversion, and catering to them won't result in conversion. I expect this is why there was an abandonment of PVP (low returns), of exploration systems, and in large part of the KDF for a long time.
A second asterisk would seem to be that some gameplay elements were specifically crafted not only to drive playtime but to drive purchases, like the revamp of the R&D/Upgrade system which eats DIL like it's going out of style. Someone calculated that the cost of an all 'gold' ship would be more in actual dollars than a solid gold model of said ship IRL. This kind of calculative design pisses people off, but it drives sales on multiple levels -- directly, of ZEN to get dilithium, indirectly, of keys to buy EC to buy kits and what not, and tangentally, to drive more grinding and thus longer playtime (and higher hopes of sales) to pay for upgrades.
It is ideal to the people looking at the metrics above Rivera. Like I said -- I think there are portions of the playerbase the executives have written off, and the things like ripping apart the stored rep currency is mostly designed to drive those 'written off segments' out of being able to derail sales by accumulating and bypassing the time-gating.
That would immediately invoke emo-crying from F2P types, but I'm not sure it would actually drive additional sales. It seems like a post-conversion move that only rewards those who begin to spend before the events, but would this be a 'seasonal' move or take into account their purchases throughout the year?
Interesting thoughts.
I don't think that was his intent. I think he was more concerned that Cryptic would produce such content rather than uniforms for the KDF or Romulans beacuse they made more sales. That would lead to several unpleasant consequences, none of which have anything to do with people's RP or choice of style.
It's more that analysis of any given metric can be interpreted in various ways -- and it's colored by what the executives want to see, rather than disparate analysis.
For long-time players with mutiple level 60 chars, max gear, max reps and the like, playtime doesn't lead to sales. But they have already extracted the money from you and I. Instead, just by being in the game, we are now an advertisement for what paying can get you. There's already a thread about what paying sub vets get in terms of uniforms and people saying they'll go lifetime just for that.
The roadblock to analyzing these metrics is not assumptions but desired results. I'm sure Rivera can present the metrics to show that pulling stunts like this thing with the pearls is a bad idea in the short term. But I've surmised -- based on past Cryptic actions, and the statements of several devs -- that Cryptic feels two things:
1) large portions of the playerbase won't ever pay, and so can be ignored utterly
2) outrage at things like this are only bad if they drive off more revenue than is ultimately accrued in the long run. If 20k players leave, but only a few hundred of them spent anything, and 10k players pay something as a result, they see it as a net win -- even if in the long run more players stop paying or leave.
I question their long-term analysis on things like this, and suspect (like too many other publicly traded companies) that their focus is quarterly.
First, I couldn't find any reports on studies that said anything meaningful. If the target audience was third graders, they nailed it. There was one by Swrve that did have a scrap of information on how quickly, how often, and what players are purchasing. That information contradicts the 'time spent' model. In short, by only having reports on actual studies and not actual studies, I now know less than if I just relied on anecdotal evidence from my peers.
And that of course feeds right into this quote from yourself.
'When you laugh at the metrics, you're laughing at, essentially, Al's whole job and the reason he has to leave the house in the morning.'
And of course you are correct. Here's my assumption. Companies are opaque. They certainly aren't going to come out and publicly explain how they examine data to drive sales. For the exact same reason Coke won't come out and say "Here's the recipe for Coke.". So we probably need to accept that there's much we don't know about the process. And that's it. And we never will until the day we have that job.
I will say this though. I'm 100% positive that they know what all players are doing when they spend money on whatever it is they spend money on. And we as players do not. So I think as far as that goes we're in agreement.
And finally, the Pearls, and the playing the game, and the playing the game means money connection.
Not so much. I just don't believe there's a direct connection there. I think they just corrected a mistake they made. They need players to actually play the game. And they need players to play the game all the time. In an MMO players are part of the content. If a large enough group of players removes themselves from that mix (by saving pearls in this case) what do other players do? Likely not good things. Like go play another game. Or save up themselves and join the first group. In short, not a good model for attracting new players or even keeping the old ones that like to actually...play the game. Experience it.
So I don't see any proof (and I wouldn't expect any) or any logical argument that cryptic is forcing the currency out of the game and thereby forcing those same players to participate in the game because they expect those very same players to spend money. I think what they are doing is shutting down a loophole in a time gated seasonal event that they didn't anticipate, because if they don't do so ultimately the event fails. So it isn't simply 'time spent playing=money' its a case of 'no time spent playing=no game'.
What I'm proposing is this.
Player goes to play Event. No one to play with. Player leaves game.
Player goes to play Event. Plays event. Maybe buys costume to Ice Skate with friends. Player stays in game.
Player goes to play Event. Plays event. Stays in game to watch hotties ice skating. Plans to move out of moms.
Grats on the MBA
This is a statement that shows you really have no clue how to run or design a MMO.
Every player has metrics that are important. Just because they aren't going to pay you money, doesn't mean you don't use those players to make you money. F2P MMOs are a grind because of the 95%, you need essentially 20 people to grind so the 1 person will buy the work they grind for.
This is why the dilithum refining cap won't increase, because cryptic knows exactly who is going to use the extra capacity, and none of that helps their bottom line.
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Off-topic: This is the second time recently that I've seen someone use the word "granular" in a place that I did not expect. Is this a new buzzword? an old usage that has become fashionable again? Or am I suffering from the recency illusion? This sense is recorded by Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com, but I wonder if it has been added recently.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/granular
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/granular
Other than the literal meaning of "granular" (referring to grains and such), I am mostly familiar with its use in fairly technical computing contexts like this and this. A look at Wikipedia's page on granularity leads me to suspect that the current usage comes from discussions about data granularity.
If you can find it (I tried but could not) there were some awesome videos by zynga execs talking about this. They had the biggest player bases and thus the most data and are pretty much where the metrics obsession started. The thing that struck me was they noticed people who spent the most time in game spent the most, so they implemented mechanics to keep people in game, and while sales went up they didn't approach the sales to those who played a lot naturally (I'd before the new mechanics).
They never seemed to figure out, the obvious answer was the people logged in the most "naturally" were the ones who enjoyed the game the most and that's why they spent.
Forcing or inducing people to log in doesn't have the same psychological impact. But it clearly does work.
Anyway, look for videos by the zynga execs specifically talking about farmville, they did give a lot of specifics and were fascinating. I bet you'd find what you're looking for. Last time I looked for them I couldn't find them anymore.
I also believe they should be looking at Time Spent, at the same time I think it comes across as kind of a creepy. Consider another person watching what you're doing without being seen when you're trying to have fun. Like advertising, they look for more information about their audience and make decisions on that. But in order to do that, they have to get more and more involved in your private affairs and the line between consumer and merchant becomes increasingly blurred.
When you consider readjusting their "Time Spent" metrics, you consider the idea that a player's time is no longer 'their' time, but also the time of the person who analyzes what they do and how best to implement monetization gates. Sure, there are privacy concerns -- but these are private servers and whatnot, so what you do/say in the game should not be considered private. At the same time, there should be a reasonable expectation of privacy. You're trying to enjoy the game, not being a test subject for some guy in Marketing.
That being said, I do believe they are looking at their metrics erronously. If you read what Stephen D'Angelo and Stephen Ricossa have said in the past, they look at the data that is problematic -- then they go systemically to find out why it is problematic. However, they only stop at the technical cause, not the mental cause.
If you read Mr. Ricossa's reply, he mentions they only stopped the data gathering when it became evident people were hoarding Pearls so they had no need to participate in the Risa event year after year. That was it. That was when their data gathering presumably stopped.
They did not bother asking why people felt the desire to hoard pearls. They did not bother asking why participation was so low when there were so many other things to do (I.E. Time Spent) during the Risian Summer event. They did not bother asking why people would prefer to game their system rather than play 'as intended'.
Then, instead of approaching the situation from every angle, they slapped together a "Cryptic Fun Bux" store where you could cash in your Pearls for something that wasn't a T5-U or T6 ship. It was only after Mr. Ricossa said "Every event ship you unlock is now unlocked forever on every character accountwide" that the furor died down.
And people (including me) were appeased over something that should have honestly been in the game from the get-go. We were appeased because somebody was doing their job. That's it. That was the concession made. But we take what we can get.
When you consider "Time Spent" on an individual player level, you have to walk the fine line of letting the people play how they want while discovering new methods of putting in a monetization gate.
My main issue (and I'm not sure it is one shared with many people) is the concept of ethical monetization. People respond better to positive reinforcement than negative reinforcement. To me when they discover their new monetization gates, they go for the electric shock first, then the piece of cheese after. We enjoy the piece of cheese so much we forget we were shocked electrically for not doing what they want.
I am not like most mice, though. I enjoy cheese, sure. But I never forget about being electrically shocked. And some people are so fixated on past electric shocks, they forget there is ever cheese there -- or they're paranoid and think the cheese is electrically charged (sometimes it is).
If Cryptic wants me to run through their maze, they need to let me find out my own path, and be satisfied if I'm comfortable getting lost in the maze if I so choose. But furthermore, they need to be more ethical in monetization. I am more willing to give a few bucks to a company I believe is making the moral or ethical choice rather than the most profitable choice.
If Cryptic makes me believe my time and money already spent in the game is worthless to them, then I am of the opinion my current time in the game is worthless to them, and so I am less willing to make Zen purchases. If I don't feel appreciated, then I don't feel much like throwing them a few bucks for exemplary service.
Because the service is not exemplary. I should not feel the desire to throw them money when they make ethical decisions that should have been made in the first place. I should not feel like I should give them money just for doing the right thing. The right thing should be done without any expectation of reward.
Cryptic has reasons to encourage some forms of gameplay and discouraging others. Ultimately, most of these reasons are going to boil down to sales. Anything that drives players away or discourages them from logging in will directly and indirectly affect sales.
It's not just about driving players away, but it's also about -which- players decide not to log in and the impact that subset of players has on the game as a whole or on sales specifically.
To avoid offending anyone, I'll just throw out a fictional example.
Let's say their metrics tell them that people who create or play Foundry missions spend more on the game than anybody else. Then let's suppose that you have a large set of players who spend little or nothing on the game, who get their giggles by giving low ratings to Foundry missions. This in turn discourages that first set of players from either creating or playing Foundry and sales start to drop.
Do they decide to discontinue Foundry development? Or do they take action to prevent people from trolling the ratings, even if that means those people stop playing?
Depends on the message they take out of the metrics and whether they got the right set of metrics. Maybe they missed the metric of the abusive ratings and interpret the drop in sales as a drop in interest in the Foundry and that they need to work on something else.
Thing is, nobody is in a better position to collect and interpret the metrics as they are. You and I would never know that a drop in Foundry interest is directly related to a drop in sales (in my fictional example). But whatever the cause, they need to do something to address it and then check the metrics to see if the solution worked.
Player behaviors are directly related to sales and directly drive their metrics. Positive behaviors that result in more gameplay and more sales will be encouraged. Negative behaviors that result in less gameplay and fewer sales will be discouraged or marginalized.
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They had their participation spike when the alt discount was first implemented. If you had time now why wouldn't you bank it against a future event where you may not have time? They got to suck up multiple years worth of participation in one year.
Now that that year is off the books, it basically never happened, and they are wondering why no one is participating anymore (even though everyone had already pre-participated). So to get people participating even if they've pre-participated for more years than the game is likely to last, they retire the pre-participated currency and projects. Cryptic gets to eat their cake and have it too.
(They also thought that claiming it was in the name of "exclusivity" would mollify us over the removal of the event ships. Wiping the projects every year is also a head scratcher.)
I want to come back and read everything but my concern here is not so much increasing sales by spenders (that is a different, solid, concern) but that the very tactics designed to create a pressure for conversions create fatigue. So I'm thinking more about keeping spenders from continuing to feel time sensitive pressures that may reduce satisfaction rather than incenvizing purchase or further purchase here.
TS sinks are supposed to turn non-spenders into spenders and drive a sale. Getting additional sales should probably be a different toolbox.
My thought is not that you'd be doing this to drive a sale. Rather, it's a fatigue minimzer for a pressure sales conversion tactic.
The point of time increases is:
- Look better on paper to investors who want average playtime metrics.
- Drive conversions. No. That doesn't mean that YOU or any individual will spend more. It's a law of large numbers type thing where on average some spenders come out of the F2P woodwork when youdo a time driving tactic. There are different theories on why that is that I've seen and I'm not convinced we REALLY know the intimate logistics of why it works but there does seem to be an orthodox stance that it works and that they wouldn't do it if it didn't increase revenue.
There are theories on why. But I don't know of any SINGLE reason that dominates all other reasons for this. It could just be that playing the game subjects people to advertising and more tails in seats means more and more frequent ad delivery to more people.
My point is if your goal is a CONVERSION, it's mission accomplished when they spend and you probably want to ease up tactics and switch pitches.
Like I say, I'd attack it from two angles.
Maybe vets would get fewer event currency units required per event project, giving just a touch more relaxed pace (because any vet is a proven spender). And then if you spend money DURING the promo, you get increased event currency drops from that point until the event's end. Not as a purchase incentive per se but as a destressor for people who bit and took the implicit sales pitch.
There never will be a single reason, because people are different. Consider for example that we have parked our car and, just as we get out, the car parked in front of us backs up into our car with a thud. Our bumper and the front of the fender are dented.
Person 1 reaction: “How embarrassing. I’m such a lousy driver. I can’t even park a car. I’ll never amount to anything.”
Person 2 thinks: “This guy is probably furious. I’m afraid he’ll hit me. I’m afraid to talk back to him. He’ll probably sue me. I’ll probably never get the car fixed right again . Car repair people always rip me off. The insurance company will probably get out of this one, and I’ll be the one left holding the bag.”
Person 3: “I can make a bundle on this one. I think I will hold my neck and fake a whiplash. My brother-in-law is a lawyer. We’ll sue the pants off this idiot. I’ll get a settlement on the highest estimate and get it fixed at a cheaper place"
Person 4: “The damned idiot! I think I’ll teach this guy a lesson. He deserves a good punch in the nose. I’ll sue his pants off and make him suffer. My blood is boiling. I feel shaky with rage. I could kill the TRIBBLE!”
Person 5: “Look where you’re going, you fool! Oh God! The world is full of such bumbling idiots! How dare he damage my new car! Who the hell does he think he is? He’s probably got cheap insurance; thank God mine is the best.”
Person 6: “Oh, well, we’ve both got insurance. I’ll take down the data and handle it okay. A nuisance but I can handle it. I’ll talk to the driver and get it settled out of court. These things happen in life. You can’t drive 20,000 miles a year without an occasional fender bender.”
Or possibly person 7: “How can I help the guy calm down? He doesn’t need to feel upset about it. We’ll just exchange the necessary insurance information and be okay with each other. It could have been worse . At least nobody’s hurt. It’s only money anyway. The insurance company will take care of it. I suppose the guy’s upset. That’s only natural..”
All of us see the world through different lenses. No one motive covers all of us. The exact same stimulus but a variety or responses based on our inner voice (guilt/shame, fear, anger, desire, arrogance, reason, or compassion to use the voices depicted here). What single reason could make one person respond with violence and another with compassion and a third with greed? Complex situation, complex influences.
To get specifically to your scenario, the body uses similar techniques to your two pronged action. For example with blood pressure there are about 9 hormones/chemicals we produce to raise and six to lower our blood pressure. We make all 15 constantly but at different rates that constantly adjust. Some of the really strong ones only kick in during emergencies (equivalent to wow increasing their subscription rate because of loss of players) others happen cyclically (like most events and the time gate exemptions) and others are responses to temporary effects like recovering after exercise (sales often have this function, or new mission releases timed to extend the tail of an expansion etc).
I think a more custom experience, like your two-angle scenario, will always work better than "one size fits all" because it never does fit anyone really.
Umm... , that sounds like a lot of actual work ... , and these days I think Cryptic goes around that by just adding a few more timers and calling it a day .
And I think that that way lies the "F2P" model of SWTOR ... -- or possibly the way their F2P model started out on the design table, before it mutated into what it is today .
Go you !
... now to find something to do with that fancy degree ...
I think you're exactly right -- writing off F2P players who don't pay has always crippled the ability of the game to generate new sales. But at the same time, I can't see the evidence that Cryptic is really utilizing these players in the correct fashion.
At some level, many of the choices made in recent months seem driven by the ideal that anything that generates additional grind is good, but there are fewer instances of ways for the F2P to benefit from their grind.
Which is why I don't think a power advantage for paying players is warranted but, much like dilithium autorefinement, timing convenience needs to be there for players who spend because the psychology is different. I think people who spend are more likely to experience burnout over recurring play mechanics which have already succeeded in getting them to spend, which is a substantial reason for those "login daily" and "play more" campaigns to begin with.
I don't see anything wrong with some of SWTOR or some of DCUO's model. They're actually HYBRID models, which STO's is supposed to be.
What I'm talking about is effectively getting a time extension on completing timed events (which is what lowered currency requirements or higher daily payouts provide -- a time extension). Probably the "nicest" option would be if there were a way to change the awards similar to how autorefinement works so that a gold could get their marks in fewer logins over the same time period. Ie. login weekly, get 200 bonus Risian Pearls once a week while gold.
Otherwise, things like dilithium autorefinement are a really toothless gesture if you're still going to push a spender into daily logins (just not for refinement?). And the point of pushing for daily logins is to turn people from non-spenders, full-stop, into people who spend any amount at all, full stop. Pushing people who are already spending into logging in has diminishing returns, as noted in the reference to the Zynga case study. Which means you might still encourage daily logins (and you do through daily mark bonuses) but the pitch needs to be softened when somebody is "converted".
It's engaging in counterproductive behavior in the interests of the appearance of fairness.
Now that is an interesting idea. Especially if extended beyond the events and refining. Make the default for free to play be " log in daily to manually do the busy work" and the default for gold "log in weekly to manually do the busy work" and have the rewards be the same.
I'll have to think about edge cases and abuse potential, but on first glance it seems pretty good.
Definitely helps encourage alts for spenders, which I imagine is great for cryptic.
I think you have two issues here you are treating as related because you experience them together but they are totally separate.
First, on using free players, I think cryptic uses them quite well. In a game like, say, clash of clans, or another truly pay to win PvP only game the free player primarily exists as "content" for the paying player. The devs will try to convert them to spend, but if they do not, then as far as the devs are concerned, their only function is to be raided and pillaged by the paying players. Sto is not that kind of game. Sto is primarily cooperative. Free players exist to support the environment in a crowd sourced manner.
For example, exceed the refining cap by "paying" an army of free players to refine for you (sell zen on the exchange). Or exceed the loot generation by paying an army of free players to give ec to you (sell c store or lobi or crafted or dropped items on the auctionhouse). Free players fill out teams, support fleets etc. In these roles I see cryptic using free players, and giving them a valid game experience quite well. Far better than many other games I've played (wow's "free" preview, swtor, most any mobile game, etc). Overall the "best of breed" in this area seem to be the purely PvP games (dota2, lol, etc) which are excellent at play for power, pay for costumes, far better than any mmorpg I've seen.
So for what free players represent to cryptic, I think they do a good job of using them.
On the grind that is a purely subjective experience. I guarantee that gecko doesn't say "this isn't Grundy enough, let's make it worse". What they do, is say " this should take about 20 hours to earn, or 5 hours if you spread it out over a month". Then a player sees it, and finds a way to do the 20 hours in 5 without spreading it out over a month via dailies but just in one sitting. Then they adjust so that technique still takes 20 hours. Everyone who had needed 20, now needs 80 to 100 and the first guy already has his so he doesn't care. The casuals are still taking the 5 hours over a month road anyway, so they don't care either.
This is where a bunch of people insult the guy "who ruined it for everyone" others insult the devs, and the casuals tell the people stuck in the 80-100 hour grind to "stop being so entitled" while those in the grind call them white knights. And no one is listening to each other or talking to the devs in a meaningful way about why the changes were made. Because at the core, the problem is not "players are getting this too fast/too slow" it is "devs view this as worth 20 hours, we players view this as worth 5 hours".
There is also the fundamental game design issue of " players will repeat content anyway, so is it really a grind or just what they would be doing no matter what and they call it a grind when they want the carrot they haven't received yet?"
Which is a very big discussion that needs its own thread.
This is more or less what I'm thinking, yeah.
Plus maybe throwing in 30 days of "stipendless" gold status when somebody makes a ZEN purchase, piggybacking off of the "first time buyer" tech.
There's less potential for abuse now that event currency is being retired annually. Worst case, a Gold who DOES play daily gets maybe 7 free spec points in a month (from redeeming unspent event currency) if they play the event every day, in addition to bonus marks. That doesn't SEEM gamebreaking to me though because you ARE talking about daily play for a month that doesn't otherwise award spec points at a meaningful rate.