Hobson Fiffledown 08.11.2015 17:15
When you eventually do find yourself in need of a temple consecrated to a certain three-eyed jackal type god. I know a guy.
Zycor 08.11.2015 18:15
Ya I think I screwed up on my thought process. If they add plex then change the sub price that would screw up the in game economy. So maybe, lower sub price to $5-10/month. Then add in plex and raise sub price to $12-$15.
Elsworth Sugarfoot 08.11.2015 20:33
I've often thought that lowering the sub to $10 might actually increase revenue as most people like to play multiple characters and would be much more likely to play 2 for 20.
I think they could find a sweet spot around $13 which would increase player population without cutting into income too much. This is, of course, just a number from my butt based on GW saying "we can do it for fifteen". Unfortunately, figuring out what the best number is requires resources which I don't think are available. Shooting from the hip on that and missing can be deadly. Any benefits to subscription retention rates (not initial subscription gains) really wouldn't even be attributable for six months or so, and that's really only compared to the previous eight months or so of whatever subscription retention data GW does have.
I just don't know if it's worth the resources to finesse gains like that right now if we're locked into $15 at OE anyway. If GW had the resources to throw at a study and risk potential revenue loss to add new players, then they would probably have enough capital on hand not to worry about increasing revenue in order to develop their project, and they probably wouldn't need to take risks or reduce monthly revenue in order to add players (beyond an acceptable testing group). Which brings us back to not knowing… I want more players. GW wants more players. But does GW need more players to get to OE?
I worked in bookstore for close to 25 years. I once had a guy (that read a lot of books and had a well-thought-of blog where he reviewed them) give me some very considered advice on how we were doing it wrong, and what we should be doing to sell more books. I was very polite.
Am I the only one that saw the $15 per month price tag as a "restrict early accss to serious starters" gateway rather than a money making exercise ?
We all likely saw it that way before EE started. Things change when targets are not met.
Decius 08.11.2015 23:07
Ryan Dancey
Just for the record we would be thrilled to have all the EVE and Darkfall players.
Personally, I'd rather have all of the players who liked the idea of Darkfall but couldn't stand the culture there.
I don't mind paying the fee of $15. It's just the common motif I hear from people that I try to recruit to the game. It wouldn't be hard to do– cut the sub price and add more cash shop items.
I understand our characters are the time we pay for them, they have value.
Most people are looking for a new game. The first impression of a not even close to being finished game with a price tag of $15/month isn't a good first impression. Only a few of us have the generous and gentle heart of actually trying to help the devs build the game from the ground up. Most people aren't that gentle, they see a piece of crap, and fling it to the side. Look at MMORPG and all of the other news sites take a dump on PFO. I myself think MMORPG.com is a joke of a website. But to a lot of people go to this site and base their opinions on whether to try a game based on their articles/reviews. The majority of people are crying about the pay to alpha ordeal.
I dunno about you guys, but I'd sub MORE accounts if the sub fee was less or if I could PLEX my account. If given the option to add another training queue to my account for a reduced price say, $10 instead of $15 would be amazing. This would also fix the inflated DT account prices that are skyrocketing into the dumbosphere.
Here's a list of my suggestions. I'm prioritizing them, so if #1 doesn't work maybe #2 will.
1.) Cut the sub fee to $5-$10 until OE or Launch hits. People will have nice toons if they stick with the game by then and will be inclined to keep them subbed even at $15/month.
2.) Add dual training ability to accounts, where you can pay a reduced sub fee to train a second character on your account. Like EVE dual training.
3.) Add PLEX or Goblin Balls.
Here's the link to the review. Warning it isn't a good one:
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/719/view/reviews/load/395
To be honest I do not think you want people looking for yet another new game because they are bored with the current one and want a new toy to entertian them for a while.
You want people looking for a challenging difficult long term time and money investment that hopefully leads to the satisfaction after many years of building something amazing.
By the way training a second character on an EVE account means buying PLEX which if you use real money costs more dollars per character than subbing the first one not less. Last I checked it worked out around $12 to sub and train one character and $30 to train two.