At the risk of being accused of fomenting unrest, can anyone tell me how the developers intend to charge for this game when it's actually totally done and playable? Subscription? Free to play with lockboxes? Anyone know?

Only thing I have heard about is a pretty standard cash-shop.

By your examples I assume you're more interested in the repeat business enablers than the one-time purchase items.

I would like to see a "Freemium" type style where you get all the features if you are paying monthly or you can buy the pieces or features or powers you want with a one-time purchase.

blacke4dawn wrote:
So, blacke4dawn, we meet again...

Radiac wrote: Yep, no reason to not hope for both games to succeed.

I still think that CoH did it the best I've ever experienced.
- Free2Play with cash shop, or you could pay monthly VIP and get set amount of tokens for the shop + all access to the game.
- The customization integration is something I really hope they do at some point...
-- During character creation, you can see all of the purchase items in the same list as all the standard items, just like everything else. If you like it
-- and want to buy it, just click on it - pay for it - right back to where you were - done deal. Seamless. So nice.
- No real Pay 2 Win items. Just XP boosts and such, cosmetics (some pet cosmetics would be awesome at some point!), base items, all kinds of great stuff to purchase. Try to get the shop stuffed asap.

Anyway, so on and so forth. I just really liked that there was the option to pay the monthly sub and not worry about it, because I'm on the road all the time and it's nice to just login at the hotel and play. Not waste time I could just be running missions and such with the wife.

I can understand if it is strictly F2P, But I hope there is a VIP option at some point.

Valiance Online will be Free To Play when it launches.

massivelyop.com/2016/10/04/valiance-onli...ay-heads-into-alpha/

I agree with other posters that a model like CoH would be perfect VO, nothing was pay to win just cosmetics and conveniences.

At this moment, our Business Manager is following a system identical to that of City of Heroes: Freedom. A news article will be released soon with details regarding the free-to-play decision, and its details. The goal is to follow a successful system that is well-known to our player-base.

Most super hero games, or games in general whom go this route F2P...as in fail to prosper.

The best route would be to play free until a certain level or point, then they can no longer advance without subbing. I play F2P games and subscription based products. Every F2P game says things like "Our team is too small" or "Limited resources" I never hear such things from sub based products.

Make the fee relatively low compared to other games whom charge you 13-15 dollars. Make it like 5-10 dollars if you have reservations about doing P2P. This game will fail under F2P, because there will be too much F2P superhero competition.

DCUO, SoH, CO, MarvelHeroes, CoT

SoH has no intentions on adding animal parts if memory serves me from reading their forums. VO is the only title whom will allow animal body proportions. VO appears to be the only title that allows minion customization. CoT may or may not. Charge people for these exclusive features.

F2P would be a huge mistake. $5-10. Your donation page still has not completed its first goal, red flag that people are takers, cheap skates that take what you give them. If this game fails, they will move on to CoT, trust me. Even the most hardcore posters here.

The people on FB complaining about charges are takers. They are just testing you to see what they can get. True fans will support their game. True fans understand that making and maintaining an mmo aint free nor cheap.

Say what you want about me, but I am willing to pay a required subscription fee for this game.

How many of you all can say that?

Support your game.

I absolutely agree with TheCity. The only game i ever played where FtP works was path of exile... FtP usually leads to a toxic community full of people who want everything while not giving anything. Let players play for free until level 10, that should be enough to make up your mind. With a subscription model you have fairnes written into your game DNA, with FtP the temptation will always be there to make stuff better/faster for paying customers. It will start with xp booster potions (no harm in that, right?) and end with nice power sets only available to the richer players.

It would really help my immersion if i wouldn't be constantly reminded of the outside reality (cash situation) while playing this game.

I will gladly pay a monthly fee, as said before making it F2P will not be good for the game in the long run.
And honestly i think that the people that play this game will have no problems with having a monthly sub since most of the players will most likely be old CoX fans from the glory days of old.

i hope you do go path of going rouge. making it sub only makes it very hard to be viable long term. something like 90% of the cash flow in fremium games comes from incidental buying from cash shop not subscription. full premium you endup with like 30% or less of the population to make those incidental buys and ive seen no evidence of pay only community being any less toxic, if anything they are more elitist. they do tend to have less gold farming bots but they conversely have a higher return for those that do farm them.
(the best way to manage bots is to tax them not try to stop them all, make trading items to each other take some kind of 1 off licence you buy from cash shop and have the trading house trade sell for x trading licence fragments, each one good to trade one basic item with higher numbers of fragments required for a private trade of rarer items, 10 or 20 extra depending on rarity and be consumed upon trade, make each licence fragment cost a few cents base on cash store )
i hope you do stick with going rouge pay system, maybe with a system to tax bots added in and a little more bot compensated economy to take into account bots are going to get harder and harder to detect

P2P is viable long-term for companies, because it is guaranteed funds from those whom are paying. You can look for the article somewhere, I may find it but DCUO rep said only 5% of the player-base were spending money.

p2p is much more viable when you dont have competition when you are competing against existing games you need to offer a demo to entice new players

There is another monetization model, the model of elite dangerous. You just buy the game, no subscription needed. And from time to time (about every year in ED's case) there is a major update that you need to buy again, if you want to play the new content. I quite like that model.

except that way people that dont buy new content are gated off from rest of community until they do and you artificially reduce the number of players. you also have to offer regular free trials anyway to get people to try game that want to try before they buy which many do when it comes to a MMO.
im assuming your pro buying to play because it reduces the number of bots, but it dosnt stop bots, the best way to stop bots and gold sellers is to arrange economy to prevent it being particularly lucrative, such as what i suggested in earlier post with making the base currency be required and consumed for trading items and acquired for auctioning items but not tradable on its own and only acquirable initially from cash store or a flat amount each month for having a active sub. that way theirs little demand for bots, its all about how you balance economy and play style, the bot company's have enough stolen credit cards that if a game is profitable to bot they will get accounts to bot it, but the less grind in a game the less lucrative bots are, economy's without wealth entropy also play right into bot's

P2P

F2P is great, if you can guarantee every player will frequently purchase items from the item shop.

P2P is guaranteed funds

You get what you pay for. DCUO and CO are surviving, but not necessarily thriving. They have limited resources (Sound familiar? How many F2P games say this? nearly all) because they are giving away the service for free, so have to find another way to rake in money thus P2W was born.

F2P is an inevitable path to P2W.

Funny I am such a bad guy but very few of the good guys are willing to support the product .

Mr. negative aka "The reason why we cant have good things" is all in? How about you?

Few other posters are all in as-well. You in?

You guys in?

I like p2p for a few reasons. First, it puts a barrier for bots and gold spammers. Second, it does reduce the number of players but I would personally rather have a few good, dedicated players than a ton of bad players (especially non paying players).

That said, there is no reason a two tier model wouldn't work. Having a free to play with limited access and chat is common. These players can get things from the shop a la carte. Then a paid tier with full access. The free tier covers all of the benefits of f2p and the other gets the benefits of p2p. Have a cash shop with non pay to win items and I think most people can find a pay style that works for them while maximizing dedicated players.

P2P means you are serious and confident about your stuff. But it sets the bar of expectations higher. Not just for release but always.

These days with the massive amount of high profile licenses and long time P2P having become all variations of F2P it is no stigmata anymore to be F2P though (which on the other hand makes releasing P2P almost a political statement; also everybody will assume you'll be F2P shortly afterwards anyway).

Assuming you do either F2P or a freemium F2P/sub mix model I seriously suggest to take a look at Star Trek Online. They did it right; everything in the store (which has a great varity of stuff) could be grinded for (or rather the currency could be bought with an ingame sub-currency that could be grinded) if you bring patience. So Kids with not so big wallets but more time would mostly grind their stuff; mid-aged guys with wage-slave jobs like me makes a mixture of buying some, grinding some and the rich enthusiasts just lets the money trucks rolling. The lockboxes, while some of the stuff is powerful, is just different powerful than stuff you can get in the store. This game has grown considerably since the switch to F2P and even years after can still afford popular actors like Tony Todd who just recently voiced an NPC (a character he played in DS9).

If you want an example of how to do it wrong look at DCUO; especially its current new form of lockboxes (time capsules). While the long term players and of course the rich ones just get them lots of ppl questioning the morality of selling skillpoints that could only be had by paying far more than normal (grinding just not possible). It does creates a 2 class culture where a player with not so much money IRL just cannot be on same level as one with that amount which results for some doing the opposite of spending more: cancel subs and leave. Also their in-game store does not really have a stellar selection. Their poor choices in monetization by being too greedy keeps the game from really growing. Its fun for the occasional DC breeze but horribly mismanaged.

Bonus points for irony: The ex-boss of team STO is the recent new boss of team DCUO and most likely responsible for their new lockbox.

TL/DR: Sometimes less is more

Pyrion wrote:
I abhor this model, and it's why I quit ED. It wouldn't be so bad if they kept the base price of the game standard, and then added new content at set prices. But no, they cut the base price of the game, and then make older users pay full price for the new content. These means that the longer you've been supporting the game, the more you've paid out, which is entirely counter intuitive.

Guild Wars 2 did the same thing, and that's why I dropped it.

I also cannot stand the STO/Neverwinter model, but for a very specific reason. You could buy combat stuff with the in game currency. Yes, you could theoretically grind the stuff, but there was a cap on how much of the convertible currency you could earn per day, so that you'd basically have to grind as much as a year to get some of the best stuff. And that's if you didn't buy any of the intermediate stuff. And then, you buy that best stuff, and 2 months later a new best stuff comes out, and you're back to grinding forever. Additionally, that in game currency was still bought and sold by other players, and the currency you could use to buy it with, not the main game currency, was not, if I recall correctly, otherwise tradeable. You could also only get the dilithium crystals (or whatever it was) that bought the cash shop currency by doing specific daily missions. This changes the game from a game to a job. If I wanted to work at an MMO I'd go play WoW.


I'm not opposed on principle to the idea of letting F2P players earn the other currency. Heck, I'm all for it. What's important though is what you put in the shop. I'll be starting another post soon to get some opinions on this.