Idea on other payment scheme for casual gamers

[Dajjal]

Everything is more expensive for us, and that what makes me angry with all this situation and its not due to the VAT or anything taxes exist everywhere... this is just a way for the companies to steal (theres no better word) from us due to the value of euro.
I dont mind paying 15€ if i know that americans and any other country will pay the same value in their currencies, i just wont pay more for others to play.. We arnt more or less than the americans i think we deserve to have the same rights...

Console games have alot to say.. to me they worth the money if the multiplayer gameplay is good, you can say whatever you want about content but this isnt the era of cartdrige consoles, the 2 main consoles are prepared for content expansion of all kind, Unreal Engine 3 allows people to produce their own maps & mods and port them to PS3/Xbox360, more and more games come out this days with this option and with more abilities..
Comparing COD or CS series with a mmorpg is comparing a gold mine with a brand new car you are paying monthly, theres alot of competition behind those games alot of money involved, something that no mmorpg so far can give, and they will never be boring because they give the user the option to change it, while in mmorpgs you are stuck with what you got..
They may be 60$ investment but its just that, you wont pay more to play it for years... and it can give you much more than just that.
Good example is Source Engine, you buy Half Life 2 with Team Fortress 2 Portal for 39$ and it worths the money and much more, i can even say its almost free. Why !?
3 Games and hundreds of mods avaiable to download, continuous game expansion, option to create your own maps, mods, etc... etc...

Game Cards would be good indeed...

To resume my point and to avoid people complaining due to not reading my text fully, my ONLY problem is paying more than others by the simple fact of Euro being more valuable than Dollar, i simply refuse to pay like this in a monthly based payment....
If they charge me the 9€ (equals to 15$) monthly i dont have any problem at all.

[danstaff]

Originally Posted by Dajjal

...this is just a way for the companies to steal (theres no better word) from us due to the value of euro.
I dont mind paying 15€ if i know that americans and any other country will pay the same value in their currencies, i just wont pay more for others to play

If it makes you feel any better... I went to burger king earlier.... they screwed me out of burger and my fries were half empty =/

[R'lyeh]

Originally Posted by danstaff

If it makes you feel any better... I went to burger king earlier.... they screwed me out of burger and my fries were half empty =/

You shouldn't be eating that **** anyway.

[Dajjal]

What R'lyeh said

[Garvan]

Stupid question:
Doesn't most subscriptions adjust their prices according to rise/fall in currency?

[Dajjal]

No.. they just place the same numbers and change the currency symbol from $ to €...

[danstaff]

Originally Posted by R'lyeh

You shouldn't be eating that **** anyway.

I had em leave off the mayo cuz im on a diet

[R'lyeh]

Originally Posted by danstaff

I had em leave off the mayo cuz im on a diet

Nice,

[UnholyAngel]

hey it at least better that what have been paying in my old game $35 a month that really for hardcore player in my game. they give u 100% exp bonus and i lot of player pay for it.

[Haubix]

Originally Posted by Dajjal

No.. they just place the same numbers and change the currency symbol from $ to €...

I wonder if it's also 15 Yen? ^^

Originally Posted by Garvan

Stupid question:
Doesn't most subscriptions adjust their prices according to rise/fall in currency?

Take the pricing in WoW as example: World of Warcraft - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[BahamutKaiser]

Originally Posted by danstaff

*pulls out crayon* i already responded to why i think a free subscription / "social" account is bad in a previous post.



If it was in such a high demand that they decided to implement that option then the paying customers could potentially suffer from server lag and possibly have to wait long queues to log on. I don't think any of us would want that.

I bet the majority response, to a friend that logged onto a free subscription account to chat, would be "quit being a cheap ***, upgrade your account, and come play with us. We need a (put class here) for this (run/pvp/event of your choice).Sorry if im slow or dont respond but im busy healing/dps'n/ tanking."

Honestly.... when im in the middle of a run or pvping, if people message me with convos that aren't subject to what im doing and im wrapped up in it... it annoys me and id just tell them to get on vent. There are so many options to "be social"... via gmail, messenger, vent, phone. I log on to play with a bit of social on the side.... i dont want to be a target of some cheap asses "wall of text" because hes bored at home.



My response to one of my friends would most likely be similar to the one i posted above... with a few more four lettered words and an offer to pay the 15$ upgrade if they just cover my lunch one day or any number of other favors.

I mean...come on... $15 a month....50 cents a day. There are so many small small cut backs you can make in a month that would allow you to afford that fee.

If you cant then you need to stop worrying about being social in video games and start working on your resume aka real life.

As I said, people still able to log into the game but only socialize will be compelled by their interaction with other players to return to paying to play... And your not going to have cues because people can get on and socialize, you'll have cues if the developer is too cheap to provide bandwidth for the general number of participants, or maybe your not listening when I said MMOs are capable of running on retail alone, they will have the money to provide it. A pauper considers and expense a risk not worth taking just because it cost something, a business man realizes that all wealth is built around investment.

There are ligitimate concerns, which you will never be able to discuss because your preoccupied with assumption rather than study, if you could even bring them up I would have solutions for them, but you can't. The sad thing is, if you wern't so lazy, you wouldn't have wasted more time denying the indisputable than it would have tolk you to figure it out, but isn't that the scope of most human action...

Originally Posted by c4tastroph3

Pay as you go would be nice, but it doesn't seem like it needs to be implemented.

This isn't about need, it is about flexibility, yet still it is a need, games need to make money, any more money they can make is a neccessity. Verizon made 94 billion on home phone lines last year alone, they don't need to do cellular, pioneer Fiber Optic, or anything else?... a business of any sort, communication, entertainment, whatever, is a product of the need to make money, and more of it, as much as possible, do not assume the payment needs of a business based on your satisfaction or comfort, they are interested in every money making possibility, and additional payment methods are easy to offer and able to generate more wealth, that is the only thing that is relavent. Embrace that and your one step closer to being wealthy yourself.

[danstaff]

Originally Posted by BahamutKaiser

....and additional payment methods are easy to offer...

You didnt JUST suggest an "additional payment". You suggested that they go in and actually edit a large portion of the game... A separate "social setup" for 1-10 that has restrictions. Not only that it should have some intricate system setup that interacts with billing and delvls you temporarily....w/e... its not needed.

Ill say it again.... easily implemented billing options = great

I think its over doing it when u start talking about adding that separate system for such a small crowd.

And your attempt to compare Aion to such a well established company like verizon is a joke. First of all.... The merger that created verizon was ONE of the biggest business mergers in the US. It wasn't anywhere near the size of ncsoft and definitely had more history. 2 completely different products, markets, and target customers.

Verizon also started off relatively simple and then expanded....aion isnt even out of beta and your complaining that they aren't catering to such a small percentage of customers on such an insignificant issue.

98% of us just want the game to be released so we can play.... if they want to go back after release and spend time/resources messing with that stuff then i hope they go for it.... until then i hope they dont waste our(the 98%) time and lengthen beta over the other 2%.

And your not going to have cues because people can get on and socialize

...you dont think that several hundred "dead" accounts, as i would call them, on a server wouldnt have any effect on queue times or lag in game? You might want to build a little more experience with mmo's before you come to the table with that argument. The worst and most recent experience i had was with WoW. No lack of money there and they couldn't foresee a lot of the server stress. Only thing they could really do is offer server xfers and open new ones, even then it takes time.

Again...why would anyone want to just get on and chat? Do people pay and log on for the sole purpose of chatting these days? ITS GOING TO TAKE MORE THAN A CHATBOX TO BRING SOMEONE BACK INTO AN MMO... and they are not going to let people actually play the game for free unless its EXTREMELY limited to counter botting or currency sales.

[Ayanami]

Cheaper "social" accounts are basically a gold spammer's dream come true.

[Garvan]

Originally Posted by danstaff

...you dont think that several hundred "dead" accounts, as i would call them, on a server wouldnt have any effect on queue times or lag in game? You might want to build a little more experience with mmo's before you come to the table with that argument. The worst and most recent experience i had was with WoW. No lack of money there and they couldn't foresee a lot of the server stress. Only thing they could really do is offer server xfers and open new ones, even then it takes time.

Which is why I dare say that Blizzard added the function that if you're AFK for so-or-so long, you get auto logged off; in order to relase system resources.

Yes, you can push in a truck load of servers and other do-dads that will increase the system power, but even here things have to be done within reason. Face it, there is a lot more to a MMORPG than system stability that makes or breaks its success. Of course it helps, but if I had the most stable server farm in the galaxy, it wouldn't do me spit if people hated the gameplay, or it was unablanced, or the graphics were horrid or because of dozens of bugs and glitches in the game.

Originally Posted by danstaff

Again...why would anyone want to just get on and chat? Do people pay and log on for the sole purpose of chatting these days? ITS GOING TO TAKE MORE THAN A CHATBOX TO BRING SOMEONE BACK INTO AN MMO... and they are not going to let people actually play the game for free unless its EXTREMELY limited to counter botting or currency sales.

I don't mean to bust your bubble, but I can confirm of at least one exception to this rule; my older sister. She's not a gamer by any means. Haven't really seriously touched a video game since Commedore 64, casette.

In came WoW and seduced by the hype, she gave it a go. Even bought the collectors edition, so she could sell it off in case it wasn't her bag. She played, casually as one can, made friends, joined a guild and the works. Never into heavy PvP (was on a RP server) or raiding. Just... tagging along really.

The one thing that kept her going at it, in the long run (and she said so herself) was the social aspect of the game. The guild, the friends list, the ignore list and random encounters of people all over, in all shapes and sizes (personality wise that is). Top it off with a well-crafted world as WoW, and she was there.

Many times she logged on and didn't do spit. No questing, raiding, grinding, tailoring or whatever. She just sat in the freakin' in and chatted. Whispered friends and kept an eye on the guild chat. She could be at it for just as long as a regular game session, where you actually get to do a few quests or an instance.

She never went AFK, due to her constant chatting, so she was never kicked out of the server (since the game client/server considered her to be "playing"). So yes, to BahamutKaiser's defence, they ARE out there, people who'd sign up, log on and chat. How many percent of the overall players they make, I dare not say or speculate, though I feel confident enough to say that they do NOT represent the majority.


And as Ayanami pointed out, people will take the chance to have a free lvl 1-10 character for all that it's worth. That means annoying whispers/shouts of Aion gold (or whatever) and God knows what else they'll do.

[BahamutKaiser]

The sad thing is that I've spent this entire topic objectively recognizing a system and options I have no personal value in, yet I have to deal with nonsense. I've been prohibited from dashing ignorant opinions because it's insulting, so all unreasonable posters have to go on my ignore list, though I will be banned if the moderators can't resume some dignity.