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Make it harder to be F2P

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YomanROM

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 4:24am

Its pointless to discuss anything with you because obviously all you do is ranting and trolling.

Either you just can not understand or you simple refuse to.

You are not even trying to understand what anyone else is saying unless he agress with your "to everyone who does not pay at least amount X in time Y: go home."

BJHawk

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 4:30am

Quoted from "regentego;509160"

Oh and as to why I ignore certain things, I don't respond to ideologies, I look at linear business principals.


ideology, n.
1. A system of ideas and ideals, esp. one that forms the basis of economic or political policy.
2. The ideas and manner of thinking of a group, social class, or individual.

IOW, you simply ignore any idea or manner of thinking that is not your own. Had you mentioned this sooner, we might have saved ourselves a great deal of time. Now I feel stupid for having talked to you. Don't be surprised if no one else takes you seriously any more either. Mutual respect and an open mind are necessary for any profitable discussion to take place. Since you have neither, no amount of citations anyone may give are of any value. Should you ever decide to open your mind, the information is all on these forums, much of it in this very thread.
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Silenteye7

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 4:59am

Quoted from "regentego;509092"

Okay BJ you're such a smart guy who wants to criticize me, give us your utopian plan to turn everything around, no misdirection, or wall of text analogies that are more fiction then realty. This. Is a business, I came forth with a proven business plan and you have come forth with ideologies, theories don't pay the bills. To keep servers on every game needs income, Sony went with the $5 model for all their games because it works. So BJ put on your bigboy thinking cap and give me a better way to make money. Again no silly walls of text, a bullet point business model.


there's already been a number of money making ideas listed in this thread: http://forum.us.runesofmagic.com/showthr…?t=68877&page=2 ideas like selling ad-space on the loading screens, paying for character save slots, website scavenger hunts like they used to do... I'm not gonna go into all of it cause it's already been posted though, and you can comment on them there. Basically the idea is for corporate sponsorship until they dig themselves out of the hole they're in.

GarryL

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 5:11am

One thing to consider about games like this, most count players by accounts created not by accounts active.

So, when they are talking percentage of paying customers, a percentage of paying customers from all accounts created is far smaller than the figure that would be reached if they calculated the percentage of payers from only the active accounts.

I can see reasons for management to downplay the actual number of people paying in any f2p game.
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regentego

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 7:14am

Quoted from "YomanROM;509188"

Its pointless to discuss anything with you because obviously all you do is ranting and trolling.

Either you just can not understand or you simple refuse to.

You are not even trying to understand what anyone else is saying unless he agress with your "to everyone who does not pay at least amount X in time Y: go home, f'kers"



LOL nice way to wiggle out of that one. I ask for proof, all you got is "your a stupid head" go log back into the EU forums.

Silenteye, yes character slots is a good idea, external advertising most likely won't come near frogster. And the terrible idea of ad banners is that it affects me, a paying player. Gotta punish the F2P, make them pay, take away their ability to send gold (which should push the spammers to the AH) the F2P have it too good here, they are too comfortable not paying. So a new system should prove they are addicted or they can go elsewhere, except 90% of elsewhere will be the same. Being F2P should be mildly annoying. But restrictions like sending gold won't affect new players as when you're starting out you have little to no gold.

And BJ, I'm still waiting for your business plan in bullet point, so show me it, otherwise stop going to the dictionary, you got nothing most likely because you don't want to lose your F2P honeyhole. And frankly IDC what anyone thinks of me, fact is you're embarrassed because one of your silly analogies took a dive on you and you spent so much time trying to craft what turned out to be a work of pure fiction. Me at least im straight forward you on the other hand literally wrote a wall of text which turned out to be a wall of lies that someone actually said was amazing.


Okay and Garry your right, I know they have pretty good account tracking, but I have two accounts, which is not alot compared to others, the numbers are not going to ever be accurate by any means. However I believe 10-12% is pretty close. Granted it was a year ago, and seeing no servers have crowded status in betting its 6-8% now.

Biggest problem with THIS game model, everytime a big p2p comes on the market you lose players, well that happens to every MMO but here the paying players leave, the F2P continue to grind on, but it's becoming lopsided to the point its not sustainable. Notice the F2P rage here, they are frustrated, even more frustrated the us P2W. ToSH is a fantasy, GC HM death on the first trash mob. Heck to some RT is all but a dream.

Artemis is about to crash hard. Diamonds are at 50k per but gear is in the hundreds of millions, the diamond sellers will need to sell $50 worth of diamonds to buy Tosh HM gear, then drop more to stat it. Once they see no value in selling their diamonds its going to get bad.

My whole idea here was to create sustainable income do frogster can justify dropping CS prices, but BJ says it won't work, he has no other ideas, so everything is okay, the game is in great shape BJ and the F2P told me so. You know if people who used to put money in but then stopped I now see why you stopped, I'm going to reduce my participation in the game as I have been doing, I am sickened by the amount of spoiled rotten brats who complain, but won't pay, but they still play hours a day! The levy will break one day, hey I got my moneys worth at least! You F2P on the other hand will never get that time back. Oh Snap that was good!

YomanROM

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 8:00am

to paint a picture you even might understand:

[video=youtube;COLpkrsYxoE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COLpkrsYxoE[/video]
You expect ANYONE to pay for THIS? And then you suggest "make the people actually pay more / make more people pay" ? This is what people get for paying in the last two years and make RoM the most successful / profitable game still on the F2P market? And your answer to getting rid of the problems this game is "make more people pay, make them pay more, F2P players are evil" ? really? So my answer is: HELL NO. They made so much money , its THEIR turn to USE it and fix stuff, not the player base to sink more money into the company who obviously doesnt do anything.

And if you still dont get even that, it just cant be helped, it does not get any more obvious.

MegaMouseSEC

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 8:07am

Quoted from "YomanROM;509212"

to paint a picture you even might understand:

[video=youtube;COLpkrsYxoE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COLpkrsYxoE[/video]
You expect ANYONE to pay for THIS? And then you suggest "make the people actually pay more / make more people pay" ? This is what people get for paying in the last two years and make RoM the most successful / profitable game still on the F2P market? And your answer to getting rid of the problems this game is "make more people pay, make them pay more, F2P players are evil" ? really? So my answer is: HELL NO. They made so much money , its THEIR turn to USE it and fix stuff, not the player base to sink more money into the company who obviously doesnt do anything.

And if you still dont get even that, it just cant be helped, it does not get any more obvious.


Now that is one post I can agree with. I wont pay for a game that has major issues like siege which is supposed to be the main attraction of RoM. Hell I left WoW due to the disaster that happened when they released Cata. But I do like RoM and will support the efforts that Frogster puts into it, even if they are hog-tied and cannot get the devs to understand what needs done.

NaiSa

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 8:20am

Quoted from "YomanROM;509212"

to paint a picture you even might understand:

[video=youtube;COLpkrsYxoE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COLpkrsYxoE[/video]
You expect ANYONE to pay for THIS? And then you suggest "make the people actually pay more / make more people pay" ? This is what people get for paying in the last two years and make RoM the most successful / profitable game still on the F2P market? And your answer to getting rid of the problems this game is "make more people pay, make them pay more, F2P players are evil" ? really? So my answer is: HELL NO. They made so much money , its THEIR turn to USE it and fix stuff, not the player base to sink more money into the company who obviously doesnt do anything.

And if you still dont get even that, it just cant be helped, it does not get any more obvious.




Its funny to how everything really went down the outhouse when "toadster" thought it was a bright idea to do a Data Center move to I think improve latency. Anyone remember what reason was given for the data center move? cause what can you really believe when so called "official announcements" are made. I have said before that the Data Center move was nothing more than to try and Save Money, Not to improve gameplay latency's etc etc. Borken to more borken to borkified

Wonder what would happen if like almost everyone went F2P...:rolleyes: Why continue providing profit for a product that doesn't perform/function 100%. Should just buy a Ferrari with a 4 cylinder equipped with lead tires, all Show and No Go.

Borella

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 9:27am

Quoted from "YomanROM;509212"

to paint a picture you even might understand:

[video=youtube;COLpkrsYxoE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COLpkrsYxoE[/video]
You expect ANYONE to pay for THIS? And then you suggest "make the people actually pay more / make more people pay" ? This is what people get for paying in the last two years and make RoM the most successful / profitable game still on the F2P market? And your answer to getting rid of the problems this game is "make more people pay, make them pay more, F2P players are evil" ? really? So my answer is: HELL NO. They made so much money , its THEIR turn to USE it and fix stuff, not the player base to sink more money into the company who obviously doesnt do anything.

And if you still dont get even that, it just cant be helped, it does not get any more obvious.


Thank you. I have read this entire thread tonight (God that took forever. 2 hours of Regents ranting over how he's so much better than all of us because he's spent thousands on the game.), and this really sums the entire thing up.

WHY would we want to PAY for a game that is so screwed up that the main attraction hasn't worked for 3 weeks, and there have been NO official plans to fix it, let alone acknowledge it's broken.

Please... give us a reason why we should be forced to pay for this crap? We have paid... for the past 2 years, and what did that get us? Nothing but bugs, crappy community service, and a broken game.

People will pay when the game is worth being paid for. But Regent, you're more than welcome to keep spending 300 dollars a month on this broken game, but don't you dare expect everyone to. I'm happy for you that you're so financially well off that you can blow that much on a videogame. Really, congratulations.
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vfwiffo

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 9:56am

Since when is siege a main attraction? It is certainly popular enough, but this is way down on the list.

ROM is just not a PVP game. When making games, the designers have to focus on what the game is going to concentrate on and then see what else can be fitted. Usually the rest is not fitted all that well. You have to make specialization. Any game or other products that tries to be a jack of all trades ends up not being great in any of them. And it is fairly obvious to me that ROM is PVE game at heart and it has PVP components tacked in, but they are not what the game is all about. Hey, just look at PVP servers and their constant complaints of how underpopulated they are.

Sure, I'd like siege to work, even if that means that I lose much of oh-so-enjoyable post-SW QQing in world chat. But if it doesn't, it doesn't. ROM is not, has never been, and hopefully will never be about PVP or SW.

P.S. Trying to keep this short so as not to add to the novels here. Really, people, there is value in detailed analysis, but there is also value in conciseness.
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Borella

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 10:19am

Quoted from "vfwiffo;509223"

Since when is siege a main attraction? It is certainly popular enough, but this is way down on the list.

ROM is just not a PVP game. When making games, the designers have to focus on what the game is going to concentrate on and then see what else can be fitted. Usually the rest is not fitted all that well. You have to make specialization. Any game or other products that tries to be a jack of all trades ends up not being great in any of them. And it is fairly obvious to me that ROM is PVE game at heart and it has PVP components tacked in, but they are not what the game is all about. Hey, just look at PVP servers and their constant complaints of how underpopulated they are.

Sure, I'd like siege to work, even if that means that I lose much of oh-so-enjoyable post-SW QQing in world chat. But if it doesn't, it doesn't. ROM is not, has never been, and hopefully will never be about PVP or SW.

P.S. Trying to keep this short so as not to add to the novels here. Really, people, there is value in detailed analysis, but there is also value in conciseness.


Siege may not be supposed to be a main attraction, but there are many people that don't quit for good because they love to siege. And it's that one hour a day where PvE players get to PvP.
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EsxCape

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 1:59pm

Quoted from "regentego;509160"

Don't ever say something won't work unless you have a better plan in the works. That's the problem with this whole damn thread, everyone rages at the idea but can't come up with an idea of their own. [...] Oh and as to why I ignore certain things, I don't respond to ideologies, I look at linear business principals.


I and others have given suggestions about how the game could be changed to something that the p2p might find more fair, but no one said anything about it, not even you Regent >.> If they were bad suggestions, then fine because not all of us are big business owners with a good grasp of economics, but I didn't see anyone try to build off of or amend anything that was said. If you cared about input then even you would have atleast acknowledged it. But the fact that you didn't and claim to be the only one offering suggestions in this thread shows that A) you don't really care about coming up with a plan to solve the problem, which means this whole thread is just a blatant troll, or B) you didn't bother to read, which means it was pointless to start a thread as the whole point is to read what others have to contribute.

Anyway, gave my personal opinions and suggestions before, not gonna bother restating them. Since all everyone wants to do here is stick to their guns and argue mindlessly I'm going to file this thread in the "rock bottom and still digging" category. Not to sound like BJHawk or anything, but the "conversation" isn't going anywhere. Good luck on your tirade.

regentego

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 3:44pm

Okay so you are all saying siege is the main attraction, I have a new idea for you all then.

23 hours of non stop siege with a 1 hour break for questing we will rename it siege of magic!

The truth, Siege is the only thing badly broken, so you cling to it and say "This is why I don't pay" the rest if the game has mild bugs but nothing that stops you from playing. Unless your so poor you are running a P4...

aardvark3

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 4:12pm

This game is running a cycle, large influx of money when new areas,levels and equipment becomes available and a time when little or no money is put into the game. This is the time when little or no money is coming in. The big spenders have already gotten all their new equipment and stated it out so are not buying jewels etc., they have reached the level cap and no more tickets are being sold, they have done all the instances and quests in the new areas. Now seige matters a little more because it is the only place that there new stuff is shown in the best light.
Suggestions to help the money flow are running from the reasonable to the absurd. The reasonable going to a micro economy with lots of small transactions, sane but risky. The interesting putting ads on the log in screen it would probably require a short time to remain on the screen before you log on so you would have to view the ad. They could also be put on all forum pages. The absurd requiring some type of subscription any regular payment of any size no matter what extras it included would drive the vast majority of players out of the game and turn it into a ghost town. It wouldn't matter if it was 25 cents or 25 euros it is not how big the payment is but that it is required it wouldn't matter if you included a million diamonds for the payment people would leave the game so fast your head would spin.
The game is still going strong in Europe. Their business model is very successful and profitable. It wasn't that it was unprofitable in America but that it wasn't profitable enough. Probably because they didn't bring over the same business model they made several changes in the game when they brought it over including getting rid of the diamond sellers and taking diamonds out of the AH which have made it so successful in Europe. America was just a test market for a slightly different version of the game and when it didn't work as well as the original model they pulled the plug on the different version.
This is still one of the most successful mmorpg's of all times and still going strong. Why try to change it to a model with required payments or making it more difficult to play for the F2P people as so many others have done and failed? Lets not change it and make it another failure. If you would look at what is going on in the mmorpg market more and more of the previous subscription models have gone to a F2P format not the other way around.

xanth444

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 4:56pm

Actually, there are multiple reason I am F2P and rarely play now.
1. NO customer service- They do not appear to be answering any tickets, not just the missing chests. Some guildies have waited over a month without their ticket even looked at.
2. Poor stability- Even with graphics dropped to minimum, I crash a few times a day, sometimes when returning to character screen. Many times I see the map disappear, like Varanas and OS.
3. Siege- This is the only thing that gets my guild together anymore and since it has not worked, most of us have started playing another game.
4. CS- Way too expensive. If I could stay endgame with $20 a month without being a FOTM, then that might be reasonable; even though it would be more than a subscription. In reality, it costs much more than that.
5. The economy- Prices of everything are insane. Diamond sellers charge 60k+ per diamond and gear is also way too high. If you are not already an endgamer running the hardest material, your only option is be a diamond seller or farm dogmeat all day.


Also, you say that if they had a $5 monthly subsciption and they became profitable, they would lower CS prices. Have you seen their history? Once they had those subscribers, how much you want to bet they would make it even more expensive because they subscribers would not want to waste their money they are already putting in the game. Owenstein and Eve were the only ways I ever saw them give back and those were pulled because they caused them to lose profits.

The game will NEVER be cheaper than it is now. They will have sales often, but the standard price will only go up.

LadyMacV

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 6:16pm

Quoted from "regentego;509178"



K ladyM I already made a suggestion on the first page. As for not getting things, diamond buying gets you everything.



Everything but what's not there, yes.

Regent, you know as well as I do that there are items which are not constantly in the item shop. How do you expect me to buy a big puri package if it isn't there at all? Or a parrot pet transformation potion? Or any number of the other items they deliberately keep out of the shop for weeks/months at a time, until someone reminds them they haven't been in for a while?

I realize there's a "stock up while it's in" mentality behind it, but all that's doing is preventing people who weren't online the first time from obtaining it until they place the item back in the shop weeks/months down the road. It's costing them sales they would otherwise have had.

I know you hate analogies, but I'm going to use one here. Let's compare Rom's cash shop to a grocery store. It carries a lot of the items people "need", and always has a few that people "want" on sale. The difference between a grocery store and Rom's cash shop, currently, is that the only reason a grocer will remove an item from its shelves is if another item is more profitable.

Rom doesn't have a large enough item inventory in their cs to justify removing an item from its shelf.

I'm all for putting in a package like the one you suggested, but I noticed you never answered which part of F2P you think should be restricted in order to encourage people to buy it.
In a world of black, white, and grey... I'd be bright friggin' purple. M/P on Reni.

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 6:52pm

Quoted from "LadyMacV;509266"

Everything but what's not there, yes.

Regent, you know as well as I do that there are items which are not constantly in the item shop. How do you expect me to buy a big puri package if it isn't there at all? Or a parrot pet transformation potion? Or any number of the other items they deliberately keep out of the shop for weeks/months at a time, until someone reminds them they haven't been in for a while?

I realize there's a "stock up while it's in" mentality behind it, but all that's doing is preventing people who weren't online the first time from obtaining it until they place the item back in the shop weeks/months down the road. It's costing them sales they would otherwise have had.

I know you hate analogies, but I'm going to use one here. Let's compare Rom's cash shop to a grocery store. It carries a lot of the items people "need", and always has a few that people "want" on sale. The difference between a grocery store and Rom's cash shop, currently, is that the only reason a grocer will remove an item from its shelves is if another item is more profitable.

Rom doesn't have a large enough item inventory in their cs to justify removing an item from its shelf.

I'm all for putting in a package like the one you suggested, but I noticed you never answered which part of F2P you think should be restricted in order to encourage people to buy it.



A very wise statement. You can't buy something that is not there.

NaiSa

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 7:46pm

Remove all armor/weapon drops ingame and create a cash shop armor customization store. The only way to get armor and weapons would be solely from CS, the more you spend the more uber your armor/weapon will be. Price range can be like $100- $10,000 that would really set the difference and make F2P extremely hard :rolleyes:.

Seems the mods are on vacation, haven't seen a mod respond to threads lately :eek: I'm sure people knows what happens when things go on "vacation" :rolleyes:

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 8:29pm

Quoted from "NaiSa;509280"

Remove all armor/weapon drops ingame and create a cash shop armor customization store. The only way to get armor and weapons would be solely from CS, the more you spend the more uber your armor/weapon will be. Price range can be like $100- $10,000 that would really set the difference and make F2P extremely hard :rolleyes:.

Seems the mods are on vacation, haven't seen a mod respond to threads lately :eek: I'm sure people knows what happens when things go on "vacation" :rolleyes:


It's Sunday. Some companies actually do still use the old M-F business hour format.
In a world of black, white, and grey... I'd be bright friggin' purple. M/P on Reni.

DeathTiter

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Sunday, February 12th 2012, 8:34pm

Oh for goodness sakes frogster makes money lets us have a game to play and makes it nice why complain they get money and the game is up so whatever just play for the fun.