Developers Corner

Just two payment methods That I've been thinking about off and on for a very indy game.   Basically you have very little budget to start with and no budget for advertising and time for messing around with blogs(and other free forms of advertising).   So this puts you at a point where you have to have a free game if you want to attract a player base, which is the main reasons I've thought about these methods.  They also have the side effect of getting rid of real money trading, or rather the commercial farmer aspect.   I don't claim that they're anything new but they're worth starting a discussion over.

Method One:  basically a silver and gold type package.   one being free the other not.  Also instead of member ship being applied directly to your account you instead receive an item that can apply it to your account, the item can be traded ect.   This means that you're increasing your paying player base by a considerable amount, since a nice amount of the player base will end up joining just because it's free they'll eventually get to the point where they want to get further(either paying themselves or trading for an upgrade).

Various things are locked out on the silver plan, you can't level past a certain point and through that you can't get to certain areas or some are very difficult to be in or get to, while you can still lease housing you but you can't hire NPC's to act as shop keepers/traders/greeters, and you can't participate in politics(which gives you access to stuff along the lines of controlling the towns policies, if you're a citizen of it, which with enough votes you can reduce/increase taxes, barr entry, barr from areas(crafting areas, mining areas ect.), by person/guild/town).

Method Two: Monsters don't drop gold instead all is bought from the cash shop.

The gold is used for two things and only two things.  

The first thing is leasing a house/shop/guild hall in the persistant world(not instanced), you have full ability to hire NPC's manage their chat paths control their trading abilities(part of the lease).

gold is the only thing that the auction house like mechanic accepts in trading items.  There's also no fee for using the auction house so that means anyone can put something up and get gold even if they aren't the original buyers of it.

It also entirely possible to play the entire game without ever once having touched a piece of gold, you're just going to end up bartering(which is made possible because there are a few handful of items that are used in every crafting recipe and are light) and trading person to person.

Your first method is actually pretty common, if I'm not mistaken.  It seems to work ok, when done right.  The second was attempted by Roma Victor.  Not sure if it was sucessful or not, because the overall game wasn't.

Along those same lines, here are a couple of methods I've thought of:

1.  Vote with your wallet-  An "auction" is held where the winner gets to influence the development of the game in some way.  Obviously not important decisions, like bug fixes or class balance, but maybe to decide the theme of a new zone, or comission some wearables from the art team.  This probably wouldn't work as the main source of income, but it could be a nice bonus.

2.  Tax RMT- Essentially, a currency, not the main currency but a currency, is sold that can be cashed out at a reduced rate.  Similar to the idea behind Project Entropia, except the economy is closed and it would be used almost exclusively in player to player trades.

Essentially what this does is open up real money trade to the little guy.  I don't think RMT is the problem, per se, the main problem is goldfarming, which is symptomatic of a poorly designed economy.  Anyways, this would make it easy to buy small amounts of in game money and items from a large number of players, eliminating the need for professional goldfarmers.

In order for this to work, the real money backed currency would have to be small, say 100 to $0.01.  This would eliminate the need to buy in bulk.  It would also mean that players couldn't cash out until they accumulate a large amount, which works to the company's benefit.  This is not to say that the real money currency would be worthless, but they'd be more likely to trade it back for in game items than try to cash it out.

As I said, this would not be the main currency in the game.  There will be a purely in-game currency that behaves like the currency in current games.  Real money would just be one of many products exchanged on the market in game.  The main problem with this is it may be considered gambling in some jurisdictions, so you'd have to restrict who can buy the real money currency.

techincally both the designs are intended to make the game free a nice sized portion of the player base.   and encourage people who would normally be willing to spend a nice amount of money to do so, and have that filter down to the rest of the community.   Basically an item shop in a much more limited form.

Yeah, I don't like the item shop/real money idea for games. It tends to feel too much like people with a large disposable income are going to spend a lot, and end up unbalancing the game. Of course, this is where you make your money, and why so many asian games follow this model. They have such a high population, and a lot of addicted people who do spend 50$ or more a month on items, that they can keep things going. But from a gameplay/gameworld perspective I really don't like it. If the incentives to pay are too low, than what is the point of paying? No one pays and the game is in danger. If incentives are worth the money, that generally means they will unbalance the game in favor of those who pay, (and pay and pay and pay to get ahead) and hurt the economy of the game. I think an item shop could work if you can manage to have a divide between free and paying players, but don't have any divide between pay a little and pay a lot players.

The tier method I think is one of the better options. Free mode works as sort of an extended free trial, and if you can't keep your account going, this system usually means you aren't in danger of losing your character etc if you need to stop paying for a few months. Many games for children use this method, I think it has to do with roping the kids in and then letting them beg their parents to pay for a few months without turning them off to the game. (And then their parent stops paying, and the kid can still beg some more later, without losing the ambition to play). Still, most of the time with this method I feel the restrictions are still too high. Usually I feel that with what I can do as a free player, I can't really tell whether it is worth paying for. I suppose if the game were really good, that would be different.

Mount and Blade, while not an mmo, was pretty successful, in that you know you want to buy it based on the combat engine alone (or you know you don't want to buy it). It had a level cap, but you could basically experience all the game had to offer before you reached it, besides just a bunch more content.

You want a large amount of people to try it, and of those you want a lot of them to pay. But the ones who don't pay, you want them to stick around as well. You have to respect both types. I haven't totally decided what my payment plan is going to look like, but it will be some kind of tier system. I'm thinking of limiting how much you can carry as being the main separation between free and paying players. As a free player, you will still be able to do everything paying players can do, it's just that a lot of things are going to be annoying, and on a mission for instance you won't get far before you have to start deciding what loot you want to bring home. I'm also looking at the housing/crafting, perhaps limiting how much you can produce.

You could also make things cost more for free players, making their not paying with real money actually benefit the in-game economy. So everyone playing is an asset in some form.

The hardest thing with alternative payment systems though, is that it adds a whole new level of balancing that you don't have to worry about if your game is all free or all paid. Not only do you have to balance between solo and grouper, pvp and pver, etc; but now you have to balance between free vs paid vs super rich. This is a lot of hassle (and everyone who has tried it has failed on some level).

I can see the silver/gold package working nicely.   one character is just 5 dollars a month(using paypals 10 dollar minium limit) that means that if you're going to permonth you can have two accounts as premium.   or if you only want one account as premium you can sell off that extra gold membership in game, or go for two months.

As far as the developer cares there's now technically two people paying for the game, one of those are technically paying when they wouldn't be.   Similar thing is in EvE with timecodes, however since you don't need to be premium/gold to play in the first place it's going to be a much bigger market.

It also provides a driving force in the market, something that will be pretty unstable in value changing from day to day but always having value, and something that is equivlent to RL 99.999% gold.

As far as the players care.   They'll see some people who abuse the system and they'll like throw little tempertantrums, and hard core players won't bother to touch the game(thank god really you don't want hardcore players in your game, especially ones so insanely picky to hate this mechanic and not understand that it's an indy game and having a free option is the best way to get a player base).   But they can atleast be comforted that the players abusing the sytem would just be using gold farmers anyways and this way the developers get a bit more cash for developing for everyone.

The first method is more interesting as it provides a stable and sure income every month. I really could imagine some people paying a lot for one of the ten 1337 pads in a capital as well.   the house/area leasing something that I've always been pushing provides a way to drain a lot of money from the market, that drain also adjusts with the market as well since if you have more money in ciculation people are going to pay more(because they can)(people are likely to sell gold upgrades to own a house for a long while, just like they would in the second method but instead buying a bit more directly).

Originally posted by paulscott

techincally both the designs are intended to make the game free a nice sized portion of the player base.   and encourage people who would normally be willing to spend a nice amount of money to do so, and have that filter down to the rest of the community.  

I believe both my ideas accomplish that.

As someone else said, it's important to have a balance between those who pay, and those who don't.  With my first method, nothing is lost to those who don't pay anything.  With the second, players have many other ways of producing tradable goods, and even have the oppurtunity to make money off the paying players. 

Many games already use a tier system, and it does work.  However, there seems to be a fine line between providing too many advantages and not providing enough incentive to becoming a full member. 

What if the ingame items were for something like ingame property and buildings?

Originally posted by wjrasmussen

What if the ingame items were for something like ingame property and buildings?

How would that change the situation in any way?