You Are What You Sell

It seems these days that you can learn a lot about a game by examining what exactly it is in the business of selling.  MMO Studios are by their own admission still working out the kinks of non-subscription models.  One of these questions is what exactly the developer should be adding when they're making money off of what sells, where the more traditional subscription model would have been more concerned with what has an overall effect on the game experience. 

• As I mentioned yesterday, STO expanded its duty officer system in a way that expands the need for new types of officers that weren't previously in the game.  This sells more duty officer slot unlocks, possibly more inventory unlocks, and potentially the random duty officer packs in the cash shop.
• After not having any new high level content in the November paid expansion box, the EQ2 team is rolling out a new zone with an increase in level cap in April's content patch.  A higher cap presumably means a complete gear reset, which means more gear unlock tokens for the non-subscriber. 
• Part of DDO's expansion pre-order rollout is a new tome that persists through true resurrection and offers a hefty experience boost - a tome that's also available in the DDO store for a whopping 1595 Turbine Points.  (Regular tomes that boost stats have also been changed to persist through true reincarnation.)  The presale packs also include existing content.  It appears that Turbine sees the sale of content - and additional trips through that content on new characters (including the new class) - as one of the big draws of their game.  (In fairness, the wide-open class system does make this a selling point.)
• When I look at something like Aion's free to play rollout with funny acronyms and nebulous details, I'm puzzled about what exactly it is they are selling (and why anyone would buy it). 

At the risk of picking on SOE (who seem to have an unfortunate habit of running into major issues that can't reasonably be blamed on the actual developers, such as their parent corporation selling the rights to the European service to a random German company or last year's hacking debacle), the catch is more with what does not get done.  Yes, EQ2's new patch has a fair amount of stuff in it, but the game is also now down to three scheduled updates this year - barely above Blizzard's notorious slow pace, but Blizzard's base releases have way more content to start with. 

The issue is that it is very hard to show any short term return on the marginal investment of putting more effort towards content patches.  By contrast, it's very easy to show increased revenue from adding some new microtransaction or whatnot.  You can eventually do enough damage to your brand name to affect player retention - Eve did this in a very short span last year, while I'd suggest the state of EQ2 has been more of a slow drain that is much harder to note on a budget spreadsheet. 

By contrast, we do still have the last subscription titles standing - WoW, Rift and SWTOR primarily - that are sticking to the model of selling game time and nothing else.  Item shop purchases remain largely optional, while game boxes only go down in price over time - the fee is the one constant in this world, for better or worse. None of which is to say that this model is more democratic - it's hard to show a specific reason for a marginal drop in subscriber numbers in the same way that it's hard to "vote against" a cash store purchase that people other than yourself are buying. 

What exactly is your game of choice selling?  Is it something that you are happy purchasing, or, if not, do you feel that the game may be going in a direction you don't like because you are not the source of its income? 

STO At 40 And 30

My steady progression through Star Trek Online's levels continues, as my main hit level 40, qualifying for another ship upgrade.  Ironically, on the same day, I got my Klingon alt to level 30, a task I'd prioritized in order to snag the launch week reward for completing the Bajor featured episode series.  A few thoughts as I near the game's level cap.

The Business Model
I did end up ordering a cheap retail box online to subscribe for one month, in order to unlock various perks for my character, including inventory, bank, and bridge officer slots.  I also picked up some Cryptic points so that I could purchase an upgrade of 100 slots to my duty officer roster.  (Note on this: I was credited 400 Cryptic points as a subscriber, but not until a day or so after I entered my retail key.  I'd be more irked about this, except that my total investment in the game so far stands at $11.40.)  How much these upgrades matter is open to debate. 

It's possible to run the duty officer system at the basic 100 slots, but you will have to ditch low quality officers, and may not have the slots to keep a full contingent - i.e. there will likely missions you cannot do for lack of versatility.  This factor is at least somewhat intentional to the system's design.  A recent free patch add a bunch of Deep Space Nine related missions which tend to require new traits found on new duty officers.  The line between more of a good thing and expansion for the sake of selling more slots (and more random officer packs to the so-inclined) is thin, and will undoubtedly be tested under the free to play business model. 

The inventory slots are a bit more optional.  I like to have more of them because I'm currently carrying around thirty six slots worth of crafting materials (which I keep on my person because I can't remember what each tier is called otherwise) and commodities.  My need for both of these things is tied closely to the amount of duty officer missions I run (way more than the "normal" gameplay), as these missions tend to either generate or require items.

As to the bridge officer slots,  I definitely have more than the minimum that I would need (currently 10 and counting), and a player who wants to fly a single specific ship can definitely get by with the free number.  The main thing you get for having more slots is versatility, if you want to run more than one kind of ship, or have spare officers to swap out on a mission-by-mission basis. 

Versatility
On paper, STO does not have a ton of versatility in character class - there are only three "classes", and many of your abilities are derived from your bridge crew.  That said, there is more depth to the system than may first appear.

Each ship type limits not only the class of officers (i.e. tactical, science, or engineering) but also the rank of abilities they can use.  If my ship has a slot for a Commander Rank engineer, I might want an officer with Rank 3 Directed Energy Modulation as their top rank ability, and that officer would not want to waste their Lieutenant skill slot on Rank 1 of the same skill.  By contrast, if I hop into an escort class ship where the only engineering slot is capped at lieutenant, I may want a separate officer with the rank 1 skill, so that I have the skill available if I want it. 

The not yet fully equipped USS PVD-5

The other dilemma I faced was what ship to choose with my level 40 selection.  Level 50 ships are upgrades over these, but not spectacularly so, and most of these ships are cash-store exclusive.  My first choice would otherwise have been a cruiser, but I have a free level 50 cruiser waiting in my bank from the second anniversary event.  Given how quickly I'm leveling, it made more sense to snag either a science or a tactical vessel since I could continue to use that at endgame if I wanted to.

I ended up picking the Fleet Escort tactical vessel.  This unpaid ship comes with bridge slots for two tactical officers, two engineering officers, and one science officer.  By contrast, the paid ships in the store tend to carry three tactical slots, which is more damage than you need at the expense of versatility.  By comparison, if I actually decide to run with a science vessel it will be because I want to have maximum scientific utility options (debuffs, unique attacks, etc), in which case it might make sense to pay for a store ship (which has three science officer slots but only one each for tactical and engineering). 

Pacing the content
I've heard complaints previously that leveling is "too fast" in the upper levels.  On the one hand, I can see where they are coming from - I have a number of missions left in the very first Klingon War episode arc, and will likely hit 50 before I complete them.  In particular, I think I only did a single mission that actually involved flying my ship during the entire level 40 range - a span where your three options are highly iconic variants of the ships from TNG, DS9, and Voyager. 

That said, this also means that I will have significant amounts of new (to me, not to the game) story content available to do beyond the game's level cap. Is this approach harmful to my longterm enjoyment of the game?  No idea.  As of now, though, this game has been my primary game for over a month running and I've got plenty of stuff left to do.  That's not a bad mark compared to many MMO's out there these days. 

Scroll of Resurrection: Game Vs World

While I was struggling with internet access issues last week, Blizzard announced that they'd gone ahead and implemented that crazy idea EQ2's David Georgeson kicked around last year - a free boost to level 80, but only as a promotion for lapsed subscribers.  MMO Melting Pot has two posts rounding up the blog reaction so far, and even this list only scratches the surface. 

The conflict
This debate emphasizes the split between MMO's as games versus MMO's as worlds.  As a game, the correct answer to the question "can I play with my friends?" is always yes.  By contrast, the very structure of the persistent online world is full of "no" answers to that question. 

• Wrong server/faction?  No.  
• Wrong class?  No.  
• Wrong spec/group role?  No.  
• Wrong level?  No.  
• Not enough gear?  No.
• Don't own enough expansions?  No.  
• Not located in the right location (back in the days when traveling across the world could take all night)?  No.  

For the players who primarily see the MMO as a world, all of these answers are the entire reason to play the game.  What is the point of playing a game where everything you have worked so hard for will be given away for free as the next promotion?  For the players who want to play with their friends, all of theeeese answers are what's keeping them from playing the game.  If there is fault in the new system, it's that it's still too limited - current players need not apply, while even the fortunate former subscribers must grind out five levels and whatever gear they need to join their friends at endgame.

A solution worth trying?
In the short term, I think there are legitimate questions about whether this approach will work or is a good idea.  As Azuriel points out, some of these goodies represent money left on the table for Blizzard, and it's not clear how many of the returning players Blizzard will be able to retain.  That said, I think it was overdue for someone to try this, and Blizzard is one of the best positioned, even after the rough year. 

As long as entire segments of the game - such as solo content, non-raid group content, etc - are reduced to a prerequisite that raiders must complete to be allowed to advance, there will be consequences to the way that players who actually want to use this content are able to experience it.  In Cataclysm, Blizzard expended a staggering amount of resources on new leveling content that even their core demographic for this material - longtime players like myself with high nostalgia value and willingness to roll alts - can't use the content because the rush to level cap ruined the exp curve for everyone else. 

As damaging as paying to skip to max level (the next logical step in this progression) may be to the MMO's, I think the consequences of continued inaction may be worse. 

The Business Model of Neal Stephenson's T'Rain

I picked up Neal Stephenson's latest novel, Reamde, hoping for creative ideas on virtual worlds and business models.  Unfortunately, the book spends way more time than I would have preferred on random modern day gun battles - which are less interesting in the world of 201X than they are in his more famous cyberpunk works where there are more gadgets for the characters to play with. 

The novel features a fictional virtual world called T'Rain - a subscription MMO with a currency that is fully exchangeable into real money, with professional gold farmers/sellers as a core demographic.  Players can subscribe with a credit card, in which case the money from any purchases or sales of gold are settled directly to the card.  There is also an option for "self-sustaining" accounts to pay their subscription fee in gold.  The details aren't fully fleshed out - this is a novel, not a design document.  Still, there are some interesting ideas to be found here.

The Exchange Rate 

The game's lore presents the act of selling gold for real world money as the character sacrificing that gold to a local deity in the hopes of receiving good fortune, while the magical appearance of gold when the player invokes their credit card is similarly presented in-game as divine intervention.  That said, I'm assuming that under the hood is a functioning currency exchange in which every purchase represents a swap of gold and cash between two customers for several reasons:

• The book spends a lot of time discussing how, rather than having infinitely respawning mobs appear in the world with cash on hand, T'Rain was modeled by geologists.  Gold must be mined by player-owned miners.  (Presumably, monsters obtain gold by killing NPC merchants players pay for stuff?)  This entire discussion becomes moot if the amount of gold in the world isn't constant.
• If you can both pay your subscription in gold and have the company pay you money for your excess gold, it's possible to have customers that are an actual net loss of money.  While there are theoretical situations in which this might be okay - perhaps if a dozen players subscribe THINKING they can be that one guy who turns a profit, or because they enjoy trying to kill that person in game - the whole quagmire is easy to avoid if the company doesn't gamble its own money.  
• From the company's perspective, it makes more sense to require players to convert their gold into a constant amount of dollars to pay the subscription fee, as compared to accepting a constant amount of gold and attempting to sell said gold (or generate new gold) to other players.

That said, this approach means a floating exchange rate, which may delay transactions and will, more importantly, impose limits on the amount of money that players can change out in one fell swoop. 

Star Trek Online's Currency Exchange - as of the time of the screenshot, anyone looking to sell much more than $1000 worth of Cryptic points is going to begin shifting the exchange rate downwards. 

Effects of Gold Farming on the Currency Market
It's explicitly stated that a character parked in a "home zone", such as a mine, will be safe and will automatically perform certain "bot-haviors", such as mining gold.  It's also stated that literal Chinese Gold Farmers will have large number of these fully legal bots, all paying their subscriptions with gold naturally, and operating at a net profit. 

Less clear is how much effort/risk this requires on the part of the player.  The implication is that more remote home zone sites are likely to be more profitable mining locations.  The player must somehow safely transport the gold to a money changer to collect their profits, and it is stated that the amount of gold you can purchase for $73 is a lot of money in T'Rain terms. 

The question becomes crucial because of the time - and to a lesser extent risk - curve.  If any player can maintain one or more characters at a net profit (in gold or real money) for limited time and low risk, this will have obvious negative effects on the value of gold (at least until players have picked the world of T'Rain clean of its geologically modeled mineral reserves).  The theory is that with lower cost of living/per capita income, you might have parts of the world where even a small net positive cash flow in dollars would be enough for a gold farmer to live on.  Putting this into practice is a very delicate balance of having it be easy enough for someone to rely on the profession for their real world income but hard enough that the potential purchasers of gold don't just roll up another mining bot of their own instead. 

Subscription Fee As Incentive
The other interesting tidbit is that T'rain's subscription fees are charged on a per-character basis, and are based on character class.  No specific numbers are given, but it is stated that someone intending to play a powerful Warrior-mage is paying much more than it costs for a literal Chinese Gold Farmer to run a character as a mining-bot. This in turn creates some unintended social trends, as players with less real-world money run around as cheaper horse-archers or other more basic classes.

Metaphorically, one could argue that we have similar systems in non-subscription games today, where the conventional wisdom is that the overwhelming majority of players pay nothing and the stereotypical minority overspends to provide most of the revenue. 

As far as the class balance question, I suppose lower subscription fees are amongst the few things we have NOT yet seen anyone try to get people to play less popular roles like tanks or healers.  Perhaps turning the system on its head and just charging people more to be DPS is a good solution.  Or, perhaps it's shortsighted - do you really want players choosing based on price, disliking the game experience, and quitting outright? 

The Fictional Virtual World
At the end of the day, the actual experience of playing T'rain sounds not unlike the notorious space free-for-all of Eve Online.  You have the potential for full looting in PVP, players betraying their factions, skill training based on real world time, and others - my guess is Stephenson drew some inspiration from that world.  Overall, though, I can't give the book any more than a mixed review because of how little time the characters spend in the virtual world that's supposedly the book's focus.  

Long-Standing LOTRO Design Issue Fixed For Added Fee

Via Zubon at Kill Ten Rats comes word that Turbine is finally addressing its addiction to adding an endless number of alternate currency tokens which take up space in player bags.  The fix will be going directly to the game's cash store. 

State of the Token

The barter items remaining in my character's bank AFTER the change to rep items last fall.

Every world event, faction, and game system in Middle Earth has its own tokens, creating an assault on player bagspace that has been an ongoing issue in the game since its launch.  I was able to free up free up fourteen slots in my bank when tokens that are used solely for reputation were turned into instant consumables last year, but I still have eighteen slots' worth of barter items, event currencies, etc.  Many of these are bound to character and difficult to replace if I simply pitched them, as they are earned through daily quests or group dungeon runs.  It's also worth noting that I have yet to enter the current expansion content; I'm not aware of whether there are more tokens, but I'd be shocked if there aren't any. 

While LOTRO does offer various ways to increase your bank storage (both in-game and through the store), there's nothing you can do to increase the storage on your character once you have unlocked the premium bagslots (either by paying for the unlocks, or, more economically, by subscribing for a single month).  You can bank the things, with varying degrees of inconvenience in terms of proximity between banks and the relevant reward vendors, but there's no help for the tokens that you are currently acquiring from quests, dungeons, etc.

The solution
Details are incomplete, but the forum thread Zubon found says that the new system will allow all of the items to go into the existing barter wallet.  The posts say that the wallet is also going account-wide, which is marginally useful in terms of gear for alts, or perhaps funneling dungeon currency to a different character.  For comparison, EQ2's shared bank, which is free for subscribers and a one-time $5 fee for nonsubscribers, allows transfer of currencies (all of which are heirloom and can be stashed in a free currency tab) function at no additional charge.

In all fairness, this trend of implementing fixes for longstanding complaints about the game's features - including travel, inventory management, and grindy kill deeds - and putting them in the cash shop is not new.  The Turbine hybrid free to play model remains one of the friendliest in the industry when it comes to non-subscribers - I spend way less per time /played in Turbine's games than I do under any subscription model, even with the occasional quality of life purchase. 

That said, these kinds of "convenience" features would be included in the base game under pretty much every other company out there.  This one unlock will eat up the entire 1000 TP "bonus" included in Turbine's middle tier expansion packages for a $10-20 additional upsell fee.  For the game's subscribers (who I maintain pay more over the long run, given Turbine's expansion pricing strategy), the unlock consumes two months' worth of the stipend meant to offset the increasing number of cosmetic, consumable, and functional features that are going straight to the cash shop.  Like Zubon, promotions like this actively make me less excited to be a Turbine customer. 

STO's Early Game

Commander Green Armadillo is sitting at rank 26, cruising around the galaxy in the USS PVD-3, a Research Science Vessel.  This puts me nominally halfway through the game's level curve, primarily through the duty assignment system, with remarkably little intervention into the game's actual leveling content.

Choose your ride

 
One of the quirks to STO's modular "class" system is that players have relative flexibility to swap out their role in the game.  After ditching the introductory ship, I went with an "escort" class DPS ship, hoping for faster leveling.  These ships do indeed offer firepower, thanks to added weapon slots, bonus power to weapon systems, and slots for tactical bridge officers/consoles (both of which tend to add raw damage).  However, this ship felt squishy and I was not a fan. 

The science vessel I am currently piloting is more of a utility ship.  Science vessels have good shields, otherwise balanced stats, and a focus on special abilities (including buffs, debuffs, and some healing).  The ships come standard with special attacks allowing players to damage enemy shields, weapons, engines, or auxiliary systems.  It's still really early, but so far I'm a big fan.

That said, I would also like to try piloting a cruiser when I get my next promotion.  Cruisers are slower tank-like ships, but they are extremely tough, and tend to have iconic Enterprise appearances.  The "cost" of doing this type of experimentation is pretty trivial.  The one issue I run into is that, as a non-subscriber, I am still limited to a mere four bridge officer slots. 

A subscriber would have eight by this point, which would allow me to carry enough bridge officers to staff all these various ship types.  Almost all ships take one of each type of officer (tactical, science, and engineering), but the fourth (and later fifth) slots vary.  My cruiser wanted a second tactical officer, and I then needed to dismiss a tactical officer to make room for a second science officer in my current ship.  If I understand the system correctly, I will finally get a fifth slot at the Captain rank to house the excess engineer for the cruiser. 

(I'm also nearing enough Cryptic points to buy a pair of slots in the store, but I may opt to subscribe for a single month instead.  This is supposed to grant permanent access to all of the subscriber-only slots for inventory, bankspace, bridge officers, etc which is a pretty good deal for $15.) 

A slow start
One thing that's struck me about this game is that it got off to a very slow and underwhelming start.  The duty officer system that I've raved so much about does not unlock until level seven, which took me several gaming sessions to achieve.  The early levels of combat, especially in the introductory ship, are similarly underwhelming due to the highly limited number of weapon and ability slots at this low level. 

I also clearly did not help my cause by working on crafting early, as this requires travel to a specific out-of-the-way planet.  Using just materials harvested running missions, it will take a long time to get the materials to ever build anything, especially given that you must build schematics and other random stuff for skill points in the early going.  Again, it's only now that I have tons of crafting materials coming in from duty officer missions that I'm actually able to make all the stuff I need (especially as I gain levels much faster than I loot gear due to my extreme lack of actually playing the original game as intended.

Business model note: Speaking of crafting, for each rank tier, your gear can come in one of two "mark" qualities (in addition to the normal green, blue, and purple quality colors.  The odd numbered marks - e.g. mark 5 phasers for commanders - are built using only materials and schematics.  The even numbered marks - e.g. mark six phasers, also for commanders - require the use of "unreplicate-able" parts which are bought using dilithium ore.  Dilithium can only be earned through time-limited daily quests and duty missions, and can be freely converted into cash store Cryptic points.  In my view, these upgrades aren't worth the cost when you could be spending those points on other stuff, such as additional ships, or to save money in the cash shop.

Outlook
The good news to my less conventional approach to the game is that there is tons of content that I have yet to enjoy at my leisure.  Meanwhile, I've been surprisingly unhampered by the business model.  I don't really run into major issues with the limits on inventory as long as I actually use a bank every so often.  The bridge officer thing is mildly irritating, and I will probably pay for some additional duty officer slots (more because I enjoy the system and want more flexibility than because it's actually required). 

Depending on whether I prefer the Cruiser or the Science Vessel, I may want to purchase a ship at endgame.  (I have a free level 50 cruiser in my bank, courtesy of the anniversary event that got me started in the game in the first place.)  Even so, I'm on a path where I will probably spend between $15-30 on this game.  Given the value I've gotten out of it so far - it's not perfect, but it's definitely different and that counts for something - that's a fair price indeed. 

Price-Checking The DDO Expansion

Turbine has announced details of pricing for DDO's upcoming expansion.  There are things that they have learned from their similar experiences in LOTRO.  A few thoughts:

• The first rule of doing business with Turbine is that patience will be rewarded with lower prices.  There will almost certainly be a similar bundle - probably minus the exp boost tome and the cosmetic pets, as with LOTRO, after the launch.  There will also be sales on both the store version and the Turbine Point a la carte offerings. 
   
• Turbine also clearly remembers the uproar when they waited until very late in the game to reveal that an expansion which cost $30 in cash cost nearly $70 in Turbine Points, in an attempt to force subscribers to pay extra rather than using their regular point stipend.  This time, they're publishing the a la carte pricing up front, which adds up to 5685 Turbine Points - almost all of the points in a $60 point bundle, compared to getting the same content, plus 1000 TP and some other goodies for $50 in cash.   
   
• Two pieces of the expansion - notably the long-awaited new class - are included in the subscription (good, as there is relatively little benefit to subscribing these days) and therefore are NOT included in the $30 "base" edition.  This leaves non-subscribers with an unpleasant option - pay an extra 67% markup now, or risk being stuck with an even higher premium if you want to add the rest of the expansion later.  This would hurt less if the jump from tier to tier was from $30 to $40 to $50, as it was with LOTRO's expansion, instead of the $30 to $50 to $80 for DDO. 
  
• Especially for non-subscriber, the deals are better the less you already own.  The level 4 veteran status (which I already have) is a great way to get a new character out of the painful early setup levels, but many actual longtime players may have it.  The adventure packs are a mix of good/recent and less popular (for reference, I own two of the four in the $50 bundle and three of the additional four in the $80 bundle).

Overall, my gut feeling here is caution.  It does not matter how much you "save" if you purchase content that you ultimately don't end up using.  That said, there is an intriguing difference between DDO and LOTRO in that DDO's content is much more re-usable. 

In addition to replaying the same content on the same character multiple times for experience and favor, there is a "true reincarnation" mechanic that allows you to re-roll the same character repeatedly with bonuses from past lives.  I loved a similar system in Kingdom of Loathing, and the tome of pre-level-20 exp boost (which I do suspect will be available as a separate store purchase) will be a huge benefit to any such effort.  Then again, re-rolling at 20 means not using the new level 20+ content in the expansion. 

I guess the bottom line is to ask yourself a question - how much DDO - including the new stuff - do you think you'll play?