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atazs

Changes to the subscription system with the release of Steam WO

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This has to happen, or the whole release of WO on Steam is doomed to fail in the long term.

 

This is 2019. Subscriptions are simply a thing of the past. They work only with a selected few, old, and much more established,  well known AAA games like WoW, Final Fantasy and a few more games. Even Blizzard have realized over the years that they needed changes, hence they tried things like RaF, free trials and a bunch more things, with the biggest thing being the ability to buy premium purely with ingame gold, which is extremely easy to get nowadays. While you can do the same in Wurm, it is much more difficult and time consuming especially in todays economy. The only source of income comes from people buying coins for real life money. The economy needs actual internal sustenance, paying for money shouldn't be the core sustenance, but thats going off topic

 

A lot of people whom i have played with over almost a decade by now, have been turned off by the subscriptions, even when it used to be cheaper, it was a huge undertaking to convince them to buy and play. Now with the release of WU and WO dying and revenues down (as Rolf have said) and the imminent release of WO for Steam, i believe it is finally time to change the system. People have fled to WU to escape the subscriptions, which is only a one time buy or pretty much free if you know where to look (you can buy it for 1 dollar in bundles). It has almost the exact same features present, if not more due to modding and GM tools, and more options for players on how they want to play.

Those who did not leave to WU because of their characters or investements, have also started to quit due to the low player numbers or their friends leaving the game.

While i dont call myself an expert on this situation, here are a few ideas that i have that could work,

 

  • Reduce premium prices to what they originally were or even less.
  • Keep the same premium price, but create an account system (that every normal game has) where you buy premium for the account and are allowed to have several characters that also benefit from premium instead of having to pay seperately for each character. I mean seriously, can you imagine WoW charging you 10 euros a month per character, and if you dont, you are restricted to lvl 20? Or a similiar system to EvE where there is a default subscription say at 7euro for one premium, but if you pay 10 euro you can have several premium characters.
  • More bonuses to premium players. The referral system and simply allowing the person to grind their skills above 20 isn't enough. Skills should be restricted to at LEAST 50 or not restricted at all, and instead allow only premiums to be priests and only premiums to make deeds. There are plenty of things that might not be hugely important for a lot of players and can be overlooked. Giving bonuses to skillgain or anything like that however should be a big no-no.
  • Remove subscriptions altogether and instead offer a cash shop sort of thing that sells customization stuff. Make unique items such as: past christmas gifts and other gifts and titles that are not available anymore or are hard to get to be bought with real life money. Increase deed prices or deed upkeep (though this would upset many people) and other small bonuses that would generally not upset the balance of the game. Maybe merchants, traders or hell even bartenders for your deed could be bought with real life money as well? Maybe you could pay real life money for your deed to become a spawn point for people who died, regardless of where they died on the server? Custom banners, etc..? Huge possibilities here 
Edited by atazs
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Always +1 for such suggestions that always being overlooked.

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Preaching my sermon, but I don't mind a bit!  +1 definitely.

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Yes in principle but no to increase deed price or deed upkeep.  If a premium char can make a deed, the deed itself should be relatively free to keep and be able to be kept with money generated from within the game itself, with little rewards you get from just playing the game.

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Someone else mentioned levels of premium, IE Silver, Gold, etc. 

 

maybe allow a basic basic premium for max skills and say 2 toons, additional perks including free deed up to X amount of tiles or something, additional toon limit. 

 

Things that wouldn’t at all be needed or create a p2w scenario but would offer a convenience or discount for a sort of “bulk” purchase. 

 

I like most suggestions on a restructured premium system, and would love to see the dev’s / powers at be discussing a potential change. 

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The funny thing about F2P games with cosmetic cash shop or QoL improvements is I almost always end up spending way more on those than I do on the ones which just demand money. I've spent hundreds on Hearthstone, LoL, Fortnite, TFT and I'm playing PoE now and trying really hard to resist the urge to dump £50 on it. Contrast that with my recent experience playing WoW classic and quitting after exactly 1 month when I realized my sub was about to renew and I think you might have a point.

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Excellent idea. I agree fully. This is a discussion that must be had if Wurm is to capture the attention of the wider gaming community. If the premium costs less, people will be more inclined to buy more of it. Someone could justify the current pricing by saying it is similar to that of, let’s say, RuneScape. But that works for RuneScape because a LOT of people know that game and love it, and know exactly what paying will get them because a)it’s a lot less complex and b)they have been playing since they were young. And I’m not saying that people don’t love Wurm, or that being complex is bad, but in the grand scale of things, no-one knows about Wurm, and they won’t pay that kind of price for something they are unfamiliar with. In addition to that, if the price were to be dropped, there may be more players. If there were more players, there would be more reason to pay premium for the community and multiplayer experience that Wurm is based around. Then, some of the older players could come back, then you might end up with a sort of positive feedback loop improving the game and the numbers. I’ll be watching this thread to see what gets said.

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2 hours ago, MightySheep said:

The funny thing about F2P games with cosmetic cash shop or QoL improvements is I almost always end up spending way more on those than I do on the ones which just demand money. I've spent hundreds on Hearthstone, LoL, Fortnite, TFT and I'm playing PoE now and trying really hard to resist the urge to dump £50 on it. Contrast that with my recent experience playing WoW classic and quitting after exactly 1 month when I realized my sub was about to renew and I think you might have a point.

Well yes hence they are usually more profitable than just a simple subscription model for a company.

The problem lies in the fact that it can very quickly and very easily go out of control and ruin the whole game so it must be balanced carefully

Edited by nitram20

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I would limit the size of non-premium players to something small like 5x5x5x5, rather than eliminate entirely from deeding.

 

As you well know, deeds are about the only protection new players have from being griefed, and having at least a tiny deed of one's own is likely to make one much "hungrier" for more.

 

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4 minutes ago, Brash_Endeavors said:

I would limit the size of non-premium players to something small like 5x5x5x5, rather than eliminate entirely from deeding.

 

As you well know, deeds are about the only protection new players have from being griefed, and having at least a tiny deed of one's own is likely to make one much "hungrier" for more.

 

I’m afraid allowing free players any size of deed would open potential for much more griefing or land grabbing without paying anything into the game. 

 

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11 minutes ago, Xor said:

I’m afraid allowing free players any size of deed would open potential for much more griefing or land grabbing without paying anything into the game. 

 

 

 

They can already have deeds in WO.  I certainly don't think we should go down a path of being even more restrictive than WO. There has been zero indication that allowing non premium deeds in WO accelerated griefing; in fact, my experience in Wurm was that for every anecdotal story of a free player "griefing" with a deed, are even more stories of veteran players griefing both new and old players through deeds. The people with the most money have the most tools for causing harm. People with little money can't afford the upkeep costs of deeds just for the sake of griefing. 

 

You are not going to increase the player base if you set up penny squeezing toll booths at every path, that's the path to killing off Wurm completely.  If you want a robust, dynamic playerbase, it should be as INCLUSIVE as possible, but with special enticing perks for those who pay more into the system.     The more people who play wurm, the more who want to play.   It's a lot more fun for players with money to be King Of The Big Hill and not, king of a tiny little bump that gets ever smaller each year.  Conversely, more players quit wurm when their friends quit wurm.  As you continue to choke off a larger player base, it's no surprise at all that the game gradually withers away into decreasing numbers of players.

 

Wurm's population problems did NOT start with the release of "buy once, play free" Wurm Unlimited. It was already in a severe population decline that went back years before that, and actually dates back to when the initial subscription prices for the game were jacked higher. Opening Xanadu and other new servers countered that trend a little, but once the new servers stopped and the higher subscriptions continued, the population was dropping every single year, and well before WU.

 

Modern gaming has proven over and over that the BEST way to monetize a game is to cater to the "whales" -- people with large amounts of disposable income to put into a game -- and that the best way to attract whales, is with lots and lots of LOTS of "minnows"


 

 

 

 

 

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4 minutes ago, Brash_Endeavors said:

 

 

They can already have deeds in WO.  I certainly don't think we should go down a path of being even more restrictive than WO. There has been zero indication that allowing non premium deeds in WO accelerated griefing; in fact, my experience in Wurm was that for every anecdotal story of a free player "griefing" with a deed, are even more stories of veteran players griefing both new and old players through deeds. The people with the most money have the most tools for causing harm. People with little money can't afford the upkeep costs of deeds just for the sake of griefing. 

 

You are not going to increase the player base if you set up penny squeezing toll booths at every path, that's the path to killing off Wurm completely.  If you want a robust, dynamic playerbase, it should be as INCLUSIVE as possible, but with special enticing perks for those who pay more into the system.     The more people who play wurm, the more who want to play.   It's a lot more fun for players with money to be King Of The Big Hill and not, king of a tiny little bump that gets ever smaller each year.  Conversely, more players quit wurm when their friends quit wurm.  As you continue to choke off a larger player base, it's no surprise at all that the game gradually withers away into decreasing numbers of players.

 

Wurm's population problems did NOT start with the release of "buy once, play free" Wurm Unlimited. It was already in a severe population decline that went back years before that, and actually dates back to when the initial subscription prices for the game were jacked higher. Opening Xanadu and other new servers countered that trend a little, but once the new servers stopped and the higher subscriptions continued, the population was dropping every single year, and well before WU.

 

Modern gaming has proven over and over that the BEST way to monetize a game is to cater to the "whales" -- people with large amounts of disposable income to put into a game -- and that the best way to attract whales, is with lots and lots of LOTS of "minnows"


 

 

 

 

 

you can place a deed in WO without being premium?

 

I thought you had to be premium to even receive a deed writ in the first place, let along place one yourself. 

 

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3 minutes ago, Xor said:

you can place a deed in WO without being premium?

 

I thought you had to be premium to even receive a deed writ in the first place, let along place one yourself. 

 

 

It's been that way for many years now.

 

https://www.wurmpedia.com/index.php/Settlement

 

Free players can plant a deed, but won't be able to invite other players using /vinvite until they turn premium.

 

Ever since they added the use of "make one yourself" DEED STAKES as opposed to the 10s settlement writ. 

 

You still have to pay for the purchase of the land tiles, and the monthly upkeep of those tiles.

 

Edited by Brash_Endeavors
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I dug around a little more, it dates back to 2014 and the opening of Xanadu:

 

 

 

""The deed stake will let you claim your very own piece of land without the need of going premium or buying a settlement form. All you need is some silver in your bank for buying the tiles you want which by the way recently was halved in price!""

 

 

 

Edited by Brash_Endeavors

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8 minutes ago, Brash_Endeavors said:

 

It's been that way for many years now.

 

https://www.wurmpedia.com/index.php/Settlement

 

Free players can plant a deed, but won't be able to invite other players using /vinvite until they turn premium.

 

Ever since they added the use of "make one yourself" DEED STAKES as opposed to the 10s settlement writ. 

 

You still have to pay for the purchase of the land tiles, and the monthly upkeep of those tiles.

 

Had no idea 🤷‍♂️ 

 

I agree it shouldn’t be more restrictive than what we already have, but also thinking any amount of free deed for free toons can cause too many problems. 

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11 minutes ago, Xor said:

you can place a deed in WO without being premium?

 

I thought you had to be premium to even receive a deed writ in the first place, let along place one yourself. 

 

No. At the moment, basic accounts cannot only deed, but even declare KoS on premium players. The toxic casual harrassing me on Xan holds atm 2 basic account deeds with KoS against me, and a highway connection on what he calls his "main deed", though he and his puppets did not log in for 7 months.

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21 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

No. At the moment, basic accounts cannot only deed, but even declare KoS on premium players. The toxic casual harrassing me on Xan holds atm 2 basic account deeds with KoS against me, and a highway connection on what he calls his "main deed", though he and his puppets did not log in for 7 months.

 

 

That sounds more like a subscription player who let their subscription lapse but kept their deed, which has always been possible in Wurm even prior to 2014.

That has nothing to do with letting new players have a deed of their own.

Owning your own little homestead, no matter how small and how rustic,  is pretty much an essential, core part of the Wurm experience. 

 

There were always ways to get a deed into the hands of a non-subbed alt, though the majority would pay the relatively cheap cost of a 'referral" simply to make that alt permanent and not subject to being deleted after 3 months of non-play. If his alts are gone for 7 months now, then they too once had a subscription.

 

Edited by Brash_Endeavors

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43 minutes ago, Brash_Endeavors said:

That has nothing to do with letting new players have a deed of their own.

Owning your own little homestead, no matter how small and how rustic,  is pretty much an essential, core part of the Wurm experience. 

 

Sorry. you are wrong. I had three of my alts (only one premming, and that afterwards) planting deeds. Those were temporary deeds for tunnel rework, but they could as well have been permanent deeds. Basic accounts are able to plant deeds. Only they cannot invite villagers as far as I understood.

 

Edited by Ekcin

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13 hours ago, atazs said:

This has to happen, or the whole release of WO on Steam is doomed to fail in the long term.

..

Reduce premium prices to what they originally were or even less.

No idea what they were, but tbh I do not feel them to be that high at the moment given you are playing one character.

 

Quote
  • Keep the same premium price, but create an account system (that every normal game has) where you buy premium for the account and are allowed to have several characters that also benefit from premium instead of having to pay seperately for each character. I mean seriously, can you imagine WoW charging you 10 euros a month per character, and if you dont, you are restricted to lvl 20? Or a similiar system to EvE where there is a default subscription say at 7euro for one premium, but if you pay 10 euro you can have several premium characters.

Yes, that sounds not irreasonable given you may only play one of those characters at a time. You would then have to declare that character linked to your account, or register under your account. Question is how to implement that under original game WO (sometimes referred as ogwo). You would have to choose there which character accounts to assemble under a new multiplayer account, and which to keep separate for multiboxing. But mind that those multiplayer accounts in the game world mainly are on class oriented MMOs where a warrior always is a warrior, a crafter always a crafter, an elemental mage always a mage, a priest/cleric always a priest/cleric. But ok, might work, and would be interesting. There should be a threshold on how many characters an account could hold, though, and a clear regulation about multiple accounts. Disciplinaries, for example, would still span over multiple accounts.

 

 

Quote
  • Remove subscriptions altogether and instead offer a cash shop sort of thing that sells customization stuff. Make unique items such as: past christmas gifts and other gifts and ..

Removing subs altogether sounds bit too radical to me. Maybe extending the shop along your line of proposals.

Edit: Alongside with shop extensions the price for buying silver could be adjusted. The 16€ for 10s are bit much, and rather hindering shop turnover from expanding.

 

All in all, thank you. +1

 

Edited by Ekcin

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+1

 

Said it for years, pushed for it for years.

 

Never going to happen though.

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2 hours ago, Ekcin said:

Sorry. you are wrong. I had three of my alts (only one premming, and that afterwards) planting deeds. Those were temporary deeds for tunnel rework, but they could as well have been permanent deeds. Basic accounts are able to plant deeds. Only they cannot invite villagers as far as I understood.

 

 

I am not clear what you say I am "wrong" about.

 

I am the one who posted links showing non-premmed players have been able to hold deeds since 2014, and that even before then, that there were always ways to get non-premmed alts as mayors. "Only they cannot invite villagers as far as I understood". That's what you "understood" because I just quoted wurmpedia two posts earlier saying, "Free players can plant a deed, but won't be able to invite other players using /vinvite until they turn premium." .  Your neighbor's alts apparently WERE premmed at one time however and not free players, simply because accounts never premmed are deleted if they have been absent from the game  for months, so those deeds needed a premmed mayor, plus someone paying for almost a full year of settlement upkeeps on them all long after they stopped playing -- they must really have had some reason to dislike you to go through so much expense. That's not "new player griefing old players," that's the standard nasty guerilla war between combating neighbors, and based on your forum account age date, probably YOU were the new player when it started and they were the veteran.  Also, there are no "permanent deeds" in wurm -- only deeds that are continued to be paid for, and ones that decay away for lack of payment. 

 

Anyway I can only gather you must be typing much faster than you are reading, since you say I am "wrong" about something I never said, and that I said the exact opposite of.

 

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4 minutes ago, Brash_Endeavors said:

 

I am not clear what you say I am "wrong" about.

 

I apologize and stand corrected. You are right that they must have been premmed once (prolly 2s premmed). I did not consider the deletion of basic accs.

Edited by Ekcin

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I agree, especially with the cash shop idea. It would probably make way more money than subscriptions anyway because it's all about the looks in this game lol

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48 minutes ago, Yldrania said:

I agree, especially with the cash shop idea. It would probably make way more money than subscriptions anyway because it's all about the looks in this game lol

 

The cosmetics cash shops usually don't bring in enough coins. Sure, some people buy the cosmetics but it's not enough to maintain a consistent cash flow. With cash shop games it's frequently the 90/10 rule: 90% of your players create 10% of the revenue (by the occasional cosmetic item, a one-off sale), but the other 10% of your players create 90% of the revenue (by frequently buying loot boxes, XP boosts, fighting boosts, etc.) The latter is what brings in the coins, the cosmetics are just icing on the cake - but not the cake itself.

 

To make Wurm a F2P game with cash shop you need to sell cakes to the 10%, the cosmetics for the 90% are just an added bonus, nice-to-have but not enough to pay the bills. 

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