Teravibe wrote:
I am sick and tired of the F2P argument...i tell ya what when the time comes 3-4 months after the release and one side is right i give them the right and do the the "I was right and you were wrong" dance. >_<
I've heard this before
Just like people here who guaranteed that beta 1.0 would be head and shoulders above alpha. Just like the people who said I could do my 'told ya so' dance when XIV launched and wasn't followed soon after by the miracle patch. I'm still the bad guy. I'm still the negative nancy despite reason to be cautious or even skeptical about future releases.
I don't always agree with Killua, but I think they're right on this one. It's still just a hypothetical, but if XIV does indeed have their hand forced into F2P to sustain; it would be difficult to pivot away from the remarks he made about F2P.
Hatamaz wrote:
He made complete sense though when arguing against F2P. With F2P it's harder to gauge from month to month how much income you are going to have to pay everybody that needs to be paid, and then have money left over to try and create new content that's going to keep people playing(and hopefully paying). With P2P, you have an easier time trending income from month to month.
I don't really agree here. He said himself that they don't rely on outside sources for funding. The fact that they even decided to dump more money into XIV after the initial flop doesn't support his argument. They spent how long of XIV's lifespan in F2P mode? How were they paying the people who needed to be paid? That argument doesn't make sense to me.
Yoshi also used an example to talk about consistent income, but what guarantees that a subscriber keeps their subscription running? 400k subs to 200k subs in a month is highly unlikely I'll agree, but does anyone remember how fast SWtoR's population plummeted? It's ironic that Yoshi used SWtoR as an example without considering this. While SWtoR was still sub based, they dropped damn near half their playerbase over the course of several months.
To my knowledge, there is only one way to guarantee income in the long run; annual subscription. Nothing guarantees that players will be interested enough to play from month to month(though regular content updates will bolster players motivation). The only way to guarantee that players will pay is to make them pay up front.
Edited, Jun 27th 2013 3:43am by FilthMcNasty