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Post by diekao on Jul 6, 2011 17:38:47 GMT -5
I said it before and i will say it again here : As long as i can not create and play a free form character without being subbed i am not going to spend a single cent on this game. You may not care, you may disagree I don't give a crap about it. That's just my stance on it and i will stand by it.
Make something like a "Free Form Slot" purchasable and i will immediatly buy it plus any costumes/adventure packs I like. I am not subbing only so I HAVE to sub everytime i want to play this game. I am not playing archetypes.
So it's your choice, either make Free Form characters available to me for a onetime purchase or just flat out loose me as a potential costumer.
I just have no interest in playing CO without the one aspect I'm most interested in. So there you go.
Just take a hint from Turbine and others on this one.
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Post by Admin on Jul 6, 2011 19:54:54 GMT -5
I said it before and i will say it again here : As long as i can not create and play a free form character without being subbed i am not going to spend a single cent on this game. You may not care, you may disagree I don't give a crap about it. That's just my stance on it and i will stand by it. Make something like a "Free Form Slot" purchasable and i will immediatly buy it plus any costumes/adventure packs I like. I am not subbing only so I HAVE to sub everytime i want to play this game. I am not playing archetypes. So it's your choice, either make Free Form characters available to me for a onetime purchase or just flat out loose me as a potential costumer. I just have no interest in playing CO without the one aspect I'm most interested in. So there you go. Just take a hint from Turbine and others on this one. What do you think will encourage people to subscribe if you can purchase everything that is unique to being a gold member from the C-store? Either way, if you choose not to spend anything that is certainly your prerogative. However, it is obvious that there are plenty of people who are willing to spend money on this model. That being the case, I'm not really sure what Cryptic's motivation would be to change what is apparently working for them.
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Post by Stately Buff-Cookie on Jul 6, 2011 23:41:08 GMT -5
There is actually a bit of a spat over at the official forums. The Golds are discussing the idea of Cryptic having already shifted their favor to silvers due to it getting them more money. Seems like a good amount think Cryptic might have done so. With gold only being around because they can't get rid of it without pissing off existing customers. The arguments put forth were rather convincing.
If Cryptic could get away with it without royally pissing off the gold/lifetimers, I'm sure they probably would sell freeform slots.
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Post by diekao on Jul 7, 2011 1:57:39 GMT -5
I said it before and i will say it again here : As long as i can not create and play a free form character without being subbed i am not going to spend a single cent on this game. You may not care, you may disagree I don't give a crap about it. That's just my stance on it and i will stand by it. Make something like a "Free Form Slot" purchasable and i will immediatly buy it plus any costumes/adventure packs I like. I am not subbing only so I HAVE to sub everytime i want to play this game. I am not playing archetypes. So it's your choice, either make Free Form characters available to me for a onetime purchase or just flat out loose me as a potential costumer. I just have no interest in playing CO without the one aspect I'm most interested in. So there you go. Just take a hint from Turbine and others on this one. What do you think will encourage people to subscribe if you can purchase everything that is unique to being a gold member from the C-store? Either way, if you choose not to spend anything that is certainly your prerogative. However, it is obvious that there are plenty of people who are willing to spend money on this model. That being the case, I'm not really sure what Cryptic's motivation would be to change what is apparently working for them. Their motivation? Money. There have been enough arguments about how being microtransaction based instead of subscription based means more money. Or let me put it this way : In my case it's either 0€ or "cost of FF char + adventure packs + a costume here and there". This is not rocket science, there are people like me who would spend money on FF char slots and possibly other things in a heart beat, instead of never spending anything at all. Now it's only a question of how many subs they would actually loose if they did this, and personally I think it's not that many. You still get a lot of stuff for being gold. You still save around 300$ the first month if you have a sub compared to getting everything a gold member has through one time fees and that takes a while to diminish. But I will only play this game on and off anyway. I'm not subbing because hey, I'm already subbed to other games / waiting for other games anyway. Currently there is basically a window of opportunity which lasts about as long as my semester break after that I'm all over Deus Ex, Skyrim and so forth. Half a year from now, one year from now I may think about playing Co again for a while (as I did one year ago). Maybe I'm a very special snowflake and the only one, but I really can't convince myself that's true. So the question is can you? Do you think I'm the only one who would spent money on CO if they sold FF chars instead of never spending anything? If not, how many? And how many would "stop playing cause gold has no value anymore (which it still would btw).
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Post by lunar on Jul 7, 2011 7:44:53 GMT -5
If you spend up to 30$ a month, then you might as well go gold.
Modified by KJ3.
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Post by KenpoJuJitsu3 on Jul 7, 2011 9:06:35 GMT -5
All I know is that from the outside looking in, what Cryptic is doing seems to be working for them so I'm not sure anything is likely to change on the freeform front. I don't know Cryptic's accounting books but from what I've seen I don't see the motivation (or the financial viability either).
-More content is coming and at a noticeably faste rate which suggests more money has been coming in for them.
-I've seen an explosion of Green names on the official forum with joined dates after January, 2011 which means they attracted new LTSers since F2P launched, meaning more money for them.
-I've seen an explosion of new names on the official forum (prior to allowing silvers to post this week) which indicates they are attracting subscribers, meaning more money for them.
-I've seen my SG grow from about 100 characters on 30 accounts to over 600 characters spread across over 250 accounts. Most of these players are silvers who are or have been using the C-store. Many converted to Gold or LTS as well with a few stating they intend to go LTS as soon as they have the funds together..meaning more money for them.
So where's the reason for removing the primary aspect that hooks a repeat customer in favor of allowing it to be a one-off purchase?
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Post by diekao on Jul 7, 2011 9:06:56 GMT -5
Post removed. ~KJ3
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Post by KenpoJuJitsu3 on Jul 7, 2011 9:22:09 GMT -5
Discussion is one thing. Bickering and not so thinly veiled "shut ups" is another. Stick to the discussion so I don't have to lock this thread. ~KJ3
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Post by Pion on Jul 7, 2011 10:37:48 GMT -5
I said it before and i will say it again here : As long as i can not create and play a free form character without being subbed i am not going to spend a single cent on this game. You may not care, you may disagree I don't give a crap about it. That's just my stance on it and i will stand by it. Make something like a "Free Form Slot" purchasable and i will immediatly buy it plus any costumes/adventure packs I like. I am not subbing only so I HAVE to sub everytime i want to play this game. I am not playing archetypes. So it's your choice, either make Free Form characters available to me for a onetime purchase or just flat out loose me as a potential costumer. I just have no interest in playing CO without the one aspect I'm most interested in. So there you go. Just take a hint from Turbine and others on this one. The thing is, you're not the customer they're after. That's not an insult or saying you aren't important, every little bit helps. If it makes you feel better, I have an LTS and I'm not the customer they're after either. The customer they're after is the Silver player who, on a daily basis, spends $1 or $2 in store, buying heals, and xp boosts, team teleports, sidekicks etc. and get's all his buddies to do the same. A Silver player like yourself, who admittedly will not spend money unless he has a freeform, and then will buy the one time buys in the C-store, play for a month, and then not come back (and thusly not spend money in the store) for another year? Unless there are a few tens of thousands of players just like you, that's really not worth gambling away the main draw of a subscription. Much the same, an LTS player like me is also not their market, and the only reason that the lifetime subs were offered was because they were marked up $100 and were the equivalent of a subscriber for about 20 months. That's a good deal for an upfront chunk of cash and now they don't have to worry if I'll be here in 6 months paying. I've already given them 20 months worth; they have my money, and they no longer care about getting me to sub. It also doesn't matter to me if they offer freeforms to silvers since I'm gold for life and it doesn't affect my subscribing or not. What does matter to me, as someone who enjoys and is invested in this games future, is that there's the potential to lose money in doing so, or upsetting customers in doing so which leads to losing money. I'm more concerned with getting Cryptic as much money as possible, but I'm working with the model they've already chosen, not trying to rewrite it into something I believe might be better based on assumption and circumstance, with no actual information on their current standing.
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Post by Admin on Jul 7, 2011 12:06:09 GMT -5
What do you think will encourage people to subscribe if you can purchase everything that is unique to being a gold member from the C-store? Either way, if you choose not to spend anything that is certainly your prerogative. However, it is obvious that there are plenty of people who are willing to spend money on this model. That being the case, I'm not really sure what Cryptic's motivation would be to change what is apparently working for them. Their motivation? Money. I agree completely. And the folks at Cryptic arent dumb, so if they truly thought they would make more money selling FF slots than having them unique to the sub then they would have done it already and we wouldnt even be having this discussion. So apparently they do not believe that would be the case.
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Post by diekao on Jul 8, 2011 6:58:21 GMT -5
Take care. ~KJ3
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Post by KenpoJuJitsu3 on Jul 8, 2011 7:21:27 GMT -5
Seems this thread has started to take a turn downhill. I'm locking it down. ~ KJ3
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