I had hoped Ember would be Free to Play...

[TankHunter678]

Its up to the company to make content to fit its cash shop and fit the immersion of the game.

That said, Mark is already on record with saying that he plans to put options in so that you can disable the viewing of those immersion breaking cosmetics. We could have THMPRs that look like they are made out of snow and ice and you could turn the display of that off, while those who do not mind that can leave it on.

 

[Makovich]

I don't want to be a $60 game, but it will on the higher end of the Indie spectrum because of cost to build. No subscription fees, and we'll sell cosmetics, name changes, etc. as well as unlocking new zones. Or maybe we crowdfund the new playable areas instead. Still all up in the air, but those are general thoughts.

Hey Mark, I think you have to define this soon.
FF produced no income because the in-game store added almost nothing since the open Beta days!
Even if you wanted new items and were willing to pay for them, there were almost none... a couple of skins or seasonal items every 6 months or so....
Heck, I would have paid for the use on my battleframes of a small .png decal of my own design!
Let people MAKE stuff, let the creator keep the new item and a small percentage of sales, add it to the store!
And about those lore-breaking items, just post some guidelines so people know what's acceptable and not.

 

[Kryusien]

I think the TV Tropes paged mentioned this. Where unlike most F2P games the complaint was about how expensive things were getting, the complaint for Firefall was that there wasn't enough stuff in the store to buy.

 

[PyxelDust]

I don't mind Ember being a buy-in game. Just so long as expansions are free, one of the things Ember can do to keep sales is a system similar to League of Legends, where you dont just design a skin color, but you can design a completely different rig model that a player can buy for real money. You could also allow players to sell RMC (real money currency) to other players for the currency that can be obtained ingame. This creates a cashflow as players look to purchase items from the shop but dont want to spend real money. There will always be players looking for quick cash, and being able to purchase RMC and selling it to other players for that cash. In this sense you can have players who will dump large amounts of money into RMC for those elusive endgame items that give unique effects.

The way you could keep players spending money, which would reduce the need for paid expansions is through interesting cosmetics. For example, having 600 different colors and patterns for a frame does not make for multiple purchases. But having different designs for a character will. An example would be to change the structural appearance of the frame, such that you could make the jump jets look different, or shoot different colored flames. You know, UNIQUE things, things that make you... well... UNIQUE.

 

[Gordro]

I don't want to be a $60 game, but it will on the higher end of the Indie spectrum because of cost to build.

I would be happy with a $60 game with a subscription, after all we want content then people need to be paid to create that content. I would also be happy with one that costs just a bit more, and gives nothing extra except other characters player models automatically bow down to you as you pass them in game. I SERIOUSLY think that Firefall missed a trick with its Founders program on that one.

BUT ANYWAY I digress...

Looking back through history, we can see that the Egyptians and Romans managed some awesome construction feats and the English Empire of Victorian times can also draw a parallel.

Yes!!! Slaves, if you watch the Spartacus series you can also see some of the other uses you could put your "resources" too after a busy day designing my characters model.

I won't charge you for this idea, but anything else my think tank comes up with will be on a standard consultancy charge.

 

[Mahdi]

An issue is the expense of the art work and 3D modeling. Kern has said that he will avoid doing different designed frames due to expense and this whole deal is on the shoe string budget it is. Now, if you didn't care about collision an just coded an attachment for looks, how well would it work if they did packs you could purchase that gave you a set of different shapes you could custom lock into place at different points on your frame. We are just talking cosmetics, not functionality.

To attempt to describe it better I will go with the familiar. Look at your Recon class in FF, the high fins and such that came off the shoulders and legs. What if those fins were part of a purchased pack that could be mounted on the Mammoth frame?

The nerd in me would also say, look at the anime series Aldnoah Zero vs just about any Gundam Wing. Or back to gaming, think of Xenogears and Xenosaga and the differences in design to their mechs. If you could just switch things around but still have your frame systems built the way you want to play. I have stated before that the only other mech/frame game I have played that had the depth of customization as .6-.8 FF beta is any Armored Core game.

 

[TGVirus]

Aldnoah Zero vs just about any Gundam Wing.

thats weird... but also kinda cool, cause i have no idea how to combine the two

 

[TankHunter678]

thats weird... but also kinda cool, cause i have no idea how to combine the two

When you look at it, in Aldnoah Zero the heroes used exclusively mook suits, they were also the best looking visual design in the series. They trump the Gundam series mook suits as well. So now try to imagine Aldnoah Zero mook suits backed up by the Hero Gundams from the gundam series. Such as the ones from Gundam Wing, Gundam SEED, MS IGLOO (which is set in the timeline of the first Mobile Suit Gundam), etc.

 

[TGVirus]

When you look at it, in Aldnoah Zero the heroes used exclusively mook suits, they were also the best looking visual design in the series. They trump the Gundam series mook suits as well. So now try to imagine Aldnoah Zero mook suits backed up by the Hero Gundams from the gundam series. Such as the ones from Gundam Wing, Gundam SEED, MS IGLOO (which is set in the timeline of the first Mobile Suit Gundam), etc.

Yea, the training units looked more scientific than Gundam, but Gundam appeals to more people, being a bit cartoonish actually. Still cool thou. but not as technical.

 

[TGVirus]

On that note (giant robot theme) there were other types that seemed also technical: Macross zero, Ideon even Patlabour were interesting concepts. also so credits on the design should go to Briarious from Appleseed. Not gonna mention Evangelion because of ahm.. personal attachment

 

[TankHunter678]

That largely depends on which series. You also need to take into account size. The mobile suits in Gundam are about 50%-2x larger then any of the Aldnoah hero mook units. Most Gundam series Mobile Suits are ~4 stories tall, compared to Aldnoah units capping off around 2-3 stories.

 

[TGVirus]

Indeed. I think this issue merits its own thread! Think ill open one, later, cause now im kinda sleeptyping zzzZZZzzzZZZZ

 

[Heron]

we want content then people need to be paid to create that content.

Do they?

Ugh, I tried posting that with a timestamp, but it doesn't work with embedding. Skip to 11:06

 

[GherkinSavorus]

Hey Mark, I think you have to define this soon.
FF produced no income because the in-game store added almost nothing since the open Beta days!
Even if you wanted new items and were willing to pay for them, there were almost none... a couple of skins or seasonal items every 6 months or so....
Heck, I would have paid for the use on my battleframes of a small .png decal of my own design!
Let people MAKE stuff, let the creator keep the new item and a small percentage of sales, add it to the store!
And about those lore-breaking items, just post some guidelines so people know what's acceptable and not.

What continually startled me about Firefall's Red Bean Store was how little was available that people were actually interested in. For a game that would live or die by the FTP model, they made almost no effort to monetize anything. And the few things they did offer for real money only were stupidly overpriced ($60 for a car and $50 for a glider.... Really?) And they almost never rotated the stock from the token pool either. I know people that would have killed for Celestial Wings, but they replaced it with Icarus about 4 months in and then never rotated it back in .

Pez even had a few streams where he designed some warpaints from scratch that players actually LIKED, and in a couple of hours. Why could they not have done that years before?

Just really poor execution in their part.

 

[Grummz]

Allow me to throw you an additional idea in the mix.

People buy premium currency (such as Red Beans in FF) to buy cosmetic items. You can unlock zones with real money. Now if you are going to implement an exchange market (such as Red Bean exhange in FF) where we can exchange premium currency with non-premium currency (such as Crystite, The good stuff™) then we can unlock new zones with said premium currency at a slightly higher price(to promote new purchases with real $$$). People willing to spend extra cash on Ember will buy the unlock, people not willing to spend any more on ember could buy up premium currency from other players and unlock the zone tat way. This premium currency at the exchange will never lose it's value. In order to limit the P2W aspect of selling premium currency to buy the best gear on the market and making a profit out of the market you could impose a tax on the seller. After selling your premium currency the amount of non premium currency you get gets reduced by ~10%.

People here seemed to be worried about paying to unlock zones? I was thinking of having a couple of mini-expansions to the game. So instead of unlocking zones, you would be unlocking a combination of new features and content.

 

[DemonSlayer873]

People here seemed to be worried about paying to unlock zones? I was thinking of having a couple of mini-expansions to the game. So instead of unlocking zones, you would be unlocking a combination of new features and content.

Thats as bad as unlocking zones. Its still paid dlcs in a p2p game nobody likes these

 

[Mizogin]

People here seemed to be worried about paying to unlock zones? I was thinking of having a couple of mini-expansions to the game. So instead of unlocking zones, you would be unlocking a combination of new features and content.

Like the feature to hack other player's THUMP, so it will give all the resources to you

 

[phoenix]

People here seemed to be worried about paying to unlock zones? I was thinking of having a couple of mini-expansions to the game. So instead of unlocking zones, you would be unlocking a combination of new features and content.

Not to be a pessimist but doesn't that contradict what you said somewhere about not wanting to compromise gameplay to generate revenue. In essence didn't you want to have a p2p model to avoid hiding features behind paywalls?

In all honesty, hiding content and gameplay behind paywalls is a "douchebag" move. If anything in your game can be described with the world "paywall" no matter how you dress it up or pitch it yo the player a significant portion of the player base is going to hate your guts before even trying the game and will think you're the new Ubisoft or something. If you look at it from a player's budget then your content unlock is better as the player goes thru the content at his own passe but because of the nature of paywalls your players will have a knee jerk reaction with each update.

When you go p2p you lose a huge playerbase in an instant because not a whole lot of people will be wiling to buy an MMO. Now you are taking another chunk out of your potential playerbase with paywalls.

I wouldn't worry too much about how to keep the game alive after release. Lets get to release and then see how you can keep it real.

 

[Krhys]

There are so many ways to generate decent revenue that doesn't p'ss players off (not too much anyway, in the grand scheme of things) so there should not really be a need to firstly ask ppl to pay for the game and then subsequently pay for content, in whatever guise it comes in as. Seems that having to pay for additional content is already rubbing ppl up the wrong way.

 

[Beerdog6]

I think there will always be controversy about how to monetize a game. if the game is fun to play then money isn't a problem. I could see a F2P minigame, once the basic game is developed. Then you could go several routes with microtransactions unlocking additional areas and cosmetics. also reducing crafting time and speeding up resource gathering. You could also have a macro purchase getting all the expansions, my Stakeholder idea.
Then, once the basic investment is done, you can unlock areas to anyone. They would have to play say a certain
number of hours or certain content to unlock other areas for "free". It would require management, but could be
beneficial to increase the player base.
This is also a route for the basic game development. At each level have the initial investors alpha/beta test the content, make your changes then release the content at a lower price or free. Then move on to another stage or module. The people that are serious about investment are rewarded with recognition and inclusion in the development loop.