Convert RotMG to Subscription-based?

#31

I am one of those people that spend $1 on a game, and my parents ground me for 6 months. So… PLEZ DECA DONT GET ANY IDEAS PLEZ I DONT WANT TO GET GROUNDED CAUSE ILL BE FORCED TO PAY FOR DIS GAME PLEZ DECA MERCY… anyways u get the point. Making this game a game u have to pay for on a MONTHLY basis… yea that would make player population decline by a good 99%

#32

Thanks for the reply… do me the courtesy of a cursory glance at the discussion though. I kind of feel like everyone’s just jumping to conclusions here…

#33

Yes, sorry, I actually read that in the several times you pointed it out on the thread but still didn’t adress it in my post. Maybe adding it to the op would help.

One have to wonder though if such a strategy would really reach that many more people. If you introduce a subscription model on top of what’s already is there in terms of payment in the game (that is, everything you can already buy with gold), most of the people who have never bought gold will continue not buying gold, most of the people that already buy gold frequently will keep buying gold frequently and a small percentage of those two groups would migrate to the subscription system. Now, I can’t be sure of that - no one can. Is it worth the investment for Deca? Who knows. But what they do know is that what they have now works or not. It it does, I wouldn’t expect them to change.

Now, what I was thinking could be more beneficial to the game would be to somehow get rid of gold and introduce the subscription system. Let new accounts only play until the first character that maxed a stat die. But then again, the premium content the game offers don’t really fit a subscription model. If someone wants more vault space, they probably want them now, not a few months down the line. But it would probably be more fair than extorting money through mystery boxes. The community would shrink I believe, but maybe the rest of the game would improve.
#34

I think I’ll create a doc for this idea tonight to help flesh it out better, and systematically address the different issues brought up so far.

#35

I think Deca would have to make a lot of major changes before people consider paying money every month to play the game. At least for me. I would consider it.

#36

Yea im a jump to conclusions sorta guy

#37

I do agree, but at the same time I don’t.
Most every game I play I see a bot or a troll that wants to sell you stuff like CS:GO or League of Legends. Those games all have spam bots or a 3rd party site to get other things. For League there are people that want you to go onto a website and get teh “free points”. Spambots are not just in RotMG they are in everygame. Even though if you take away all the bots there are still tops in Nexus. That’s like going on to Oryx.In and buying stuff.

#38

The thing is, there IS a difference. I don’t give a toss if someone has tops that they bought, but I care where they bought them from. If it’s from the nexus, then money goes to DECA and that’s fine. RWT on the other hand, it means DECA is losing out on cash, wherever you bought it from gets encouraged to sell those items more and it just causes unnecessary issues.
TL;DR buying stuff from Nexus benefits the game while RWT ruins it.

While subscription is an interesting idea, I can’t imagine the hate DECA would get for turning a F2P game into a pay to play. If there is a solution for RWT, this would be the most drastic one.

#39

In my opinion I don’t think DECA would turn RotMG into a pay to play subscription sort of game. I’ve never heard of a game transitioning from a free-to-play to a pay-to-play.

If DECA did it now, many players that haven’t made significant progress in the game will just take it as a sign to stop playing. Many players that do not have or can not obtain the money to play a subscription game will also quit - for example, many players are children/teens who simply can not pay to play the game/are not allowed to play the game if it was made pay-to-play.

Although this would “hamper” spam bots used by RWT sites to some extent, this would, in the overall sense, still be degenerative to DECA who will not see as much people play the game as it does now. Admittedly, implementing this method would increase immediate revenue, by way of the, as you said, “loyal fan base”. However this would be contrasted by the fact that new players would pretty much not start the game anymore, so that they can’t find out how good RotMG is in depth, and in theory, spend money on it.

Also, the amount of people who would actually be willing to pay to continue playing, is still pretty small if you look at the poll (where did the results go and why are they gone) but from my memory was over 90% “No, I prefer the game absolutely free!”

So to conclude, DECA shouldn’t implement this because they don’t want hate, they want more and more people to play RotMG in order to make more money, not cut off a huge chunk of their current playing population in order to gain a bit of profit! :stuck_out_tongue:

Tl;dr - In short, there are certainly a couple of upsides but still no, not realistic, not likely to gain much popularity with the greater Realm community.

#40

20th like :+1:

#41

no all they need to do is hire some people in poor parts of asia to ban spam bots, 1 per cluster of servers. So lets say 5-10 people at $5 a day, $25-50 to make the game 100% more playable and approachable to new players.

#42

No.

Just, no.

First of all, RotMG isn’t subscription based, and isn’t meant to be. No.

Even if it made sense to implement this (it really doesn’t, RotMG isn’t that kind of game) and completely eradicated spambots, RWT would go on. And like all the F2p’s wouldn’t be able to play. @Knotoxic, a friend IRL of mine, hasn’t spent a penny on the game.

Even if it could be implemented (like I said, it couldn’t) it wouldn’t make any sense, because you’d still have to pay even more for gold.

edit: but Deca could just implement a human-only validation method instead of those dumbass write-what’s-on-the-sign things.

#43

Absolutely no clue how the poll disappeared… that kind of sucks. But yeah, there were only 10 or so votes for the proposal, and 95+ against it.

I’ve made a first draft of the proposal, for those interested.

#44

It’s been f2p way too long to make it a monthly sub. I wish it was from the start but I’m afraid I wouldn’t have started playing the game if it was. It would have stopped (or greatly slowed down) spam bots, and made hackers think twice about wanting to be banned.

#45

there are literally ingame purchases for a reason. DECA isn’t struggling financially, so considering they’re doing well and they don’t want to hurt their business, i don’t see why this should be brought to question.

#46

If realm started as a subscription based game from the beginning.

#47

Would it really stop RWT? I am not sure about these facts completely, but I am assuming that RWT websites are already making more than enough money right now. So it won’t hurt RWT websites to pay in order to keep selling their products. With a fee of $5 or less, an RWT website might make 5 or 6 time that money in one month. So they still make profit. Tell me if I am completely wrong with this idea, but it seems reasonable for them to do.

#48

The poll results show that RotMG doesn’t provide anywhere enough content nor appeal for a subscription-based system to profit.

Paying players do get more rewards than non-paying players (obviously through the various items/features bought), but you haven’t provided enough evidence for why that paying/non-paying experience gap should be further expanded, or why DECA can’t just introduce other purchasable items/features rather than forcing players to spend money just for time.

#49

no

Before they can charge us to play, they should make it so we can a) actually play the fuckin game and b) Deca actually does their job which is NOT adding content to the game, but actually fixing the preexisting content ingame.

#50

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