Subscribers should receive $5 worth of cash shop currency for every month they have subscribed for

EJRose83

rawne1980b16_ESO wrote: »

Personally I don't think anyone should get anything for the months they were subscribed.

It's a terrible attitude to have to claim you deserve something.

You have been paying to play the game, not paying for future rewards.

"Gimme gimme gimme", I cringe when I read threads like this. What happened to paying to enjoy something, why the hell should you get anything for free?

You are owed nothing.

Totes. I, too, have trouble understanding this. Its like when people order something at McDonalds and then demand napkins and ketchup for no extra charge. Outrageous!

LadyNerevar

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO wrote: »

You missed his point.
If we were to be paying only for access to the servers without any additional development, we'd be paying a few cents at most. The company would be doing an extremely large margin of profit by charging $0.50 per player.

I admit to not knowing how much the server cluster ESO sits on costs. I do know that the subscription, in addition to paying for new updates, also pays to cover the back cost of making the game in the first place. Even if the servers don't cost $500,000 a month to maintain (50 cents per million players per month), the 5 million that would have been made from 50 cent subscriptions wouldn't have come anywhere close to covering the cost of producing the game in the first place, much less started to make a profit. $210 million ($15 subscription, a million players, 10 months, plus $60 base cost), comes closer, but still might not recoup losses, especially given that the game hasn't always sold at $60, and that it hasn't always had a million subscribers, who haven't always paid $15 every month.

Essentially, the subscription fee serves to sponsor the changes the company has advertised it will be doing.

In ESO's case, we've paid them to develop 1.6 and all its currently announced DLCs. We've effectively already paid for that.

And as a side note, one of the advertised plans of the game was that it would remain a premium experience without a cash shop, and that hasn't been delivered and never will. Part of our game purchase and ongoing subscription since launch has been wasted.

Many would not have bought the game, nor remained subscribed to it, had it not been for those marketing point pre-launch.

You're welcome to say that their promises of always having a subscription were lies -- though I doubt they were. Rather, I think Zenimax Media (and maybe the developers themselves) were overly optimistic of the current MMO climat. However, unless they've all been wiping their butts with dollar bills, the money hasn't been "wasted." It's gone to making up for the cost of making the game and the cost of updating the game. It might not have been used in the way you'd like to have it been used, but it hasn't been wasted.

Personally, if it comes between the game disappearing forever in March, and being free to play in March, the choice of keeping it around is a no brainer. And that's really the crux of the matter. Someone promised to always have a subscription. That idea did not pan out. They can keep their promise and shut down the game, preventing us from playing it, making 400 people lose their jobs, and likely having Zenimax Media take a big financial hit. Or they can break their "promise", we can keep playing, people can keep working, and Zenimax can keep making money so that they can keep making things for us to play (including single player TES games, and non-TES titles. Because it all goes back into the same publisher's pocket).

eisberg

EJRose83 wrote: »

The fact that ZOS is giving subscribers 1500 crowns a month for a $15 subscription. Also, the cash shop is seemingly modeled after LOTRO's as well, where the turbine points to pennies ratio is exactly 1/1.

Turbine also only gives 500 turbine points a month for subscribing. If they do have a 1 to 1 ratio when buying turbine points, this means subscribers are getting 1/3 the value in Turbine Points as their subscription cost. So ZOS could do the same thing for all we know, they could make it that $15 buys 4500 Crowns.

The point is, we do not know. Without seeing the price of stuff in the store yet, we have no idea what 1500 crowns will actually buy.

eisberg

dylanjaygrobbelaarb16_ESO wrote: »

I'm a 31 year old man and a father of two. I have a job of course. Despite how much respect you think was due, you're comment was extremely rude. You obviously are in need of some manners. Also, I don't need money. It's the principal of the matter that offends me. It doesn't cost $15 a month per subscriber to sustain the client and servers. I work in a data hall, I would know. ZOS could get away with us paying .50 cents a month and that would be more than enough. The extra money we paid for our subscriptions was supposed to (in part) go towards the development of content updates, of which there have been only a few since launch. Now, with the B2P announcement, it seems as though we will be charged again for the content we paid to have developed. This strikes me as wrong and as such, I would like to be reimbursed to a degree, out of principle and for the practical purpose of purchasing DLC I have already effectively paid for.

"So, what do you get as an ESO Plus member? Access to all of ESO’s downloadable content (or DLC) game packs for the duration of your membership"
im sure once you update the client they wont be able to lock you out if you sub runs out

I interpreted the model not as pay for dlc but its, buy to play- and you need active sub to download the new content, so you will just need to activate a 1 month sub each time there is a major content update; and thats the payment. If payment is completely additional to sub I can get behind what your saying, but if you can unsub and just pay the 15$ the day before new content and download it because your subbed, then your just saving money not getting ripped off.

- are you saying we will have to buy the sub to have download access and then also pay again for the the ability to download? or that you have to have reccuring sub or get locked out of new content? neither really makes sense to me, could you elaborate.
-

Incorrect. If you stop your subscription, you will lose access to the DLC, though you can keep your rewards from it. Once you sub again you gain access to that DLC again. But while unsubbed you will have zero access to the DLC unless you purchase it from the crown store.

eisberg

dylanjaygrobbelaarb16_ESO wrote: »

Could you link something that says that.

http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-gb/news/post/2015/01/21/your-guide-to-eso-plus-premium-membership

If your membership ends, you’ll still be able to play ESO (and keep any items and rewards you earned playing within DLC), but you won’t be able to access DLC game pack content that you haven’t purchased separately.

hk11

I don't see how we are entitled to anything. Maybe some neat costume that is unavailable after.

Or better yet, a costume "stone" that will let you polymorph to appear as any other race.

rawne1980b16_ESO

dylanjaygrobbelaarb16_ESO wrote: »

im sure once you update the client they wont be able to lock you out if you sub runs out
-

It's possible.

DCUO locks you out of expansion content that should be paid for if you get it free with a sub.

For instance, if you roll a hard light character when you have a sub and your sub runs out, you won't be able to access that character.

eisberg

rawne1980b16_ESO wrote: »

dylanjaygrobbelaarb16_ESO wrote: »

im sure once you update the client they wont be able to lock you out if you sub runs out
-

It's possible.

DCUO locks you out of expansion content that should be paid for if you get it free with a sub.

For instance, if you roll a hard light character when you have a sub and your sub runs out, you won't be able to access that character.

With ESO, if you unsub you can still play your character and use the rewards you got from the DLC, but you just lose access to that DLC itself.

ThumbShanks

I feel like I got chicken rolled!

starkerealm

eisberg wrote: »

EJRose83 wrote: »

The fact that ZOS is giving subscribers 1500 crowns a month for a $15 subscription. Also, the cash shop is seemingly modeled after LOTRO's as well, where the turbine points to pennies ratio is exactly 1/1.

Turbine also only gives 500 turbine points a month for subscribing. If they do have a 1 to 1 ratio when buying turbine points, this means subscribers are getting 1/3 the value in Turbine Points as their subscription cost. So ZOS could do the same thing for all we know, they could make it that $15 buys 4500 Crowns.

The point is, we do not know. Without seeing the price of stuff in the store yet, we have no idea what 1500 crowns will actually buy.

The highest payout I've seen is 1200 FunCoin(?) points from Funcom for Secret World Subscriptions. That works out to be $10 in points a month. (Technically TSW subs pay out in two currencies. 1200 whatevers, and 10 veteran points, because the whole thing wasn't confusing enough already. But, you get the idea.)

EDIT: Incidentally, Funcom also dinged you by requiring you actually spend your bonus points to buy the DLC as it came out, rather than bundling it into your sub fees.

$5 is the norm. I've personally seen that from Perfect World and Sony Online, and seen adverts for a couple other titles with similar payouts.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

@LadyNerevar‌

The $0.50 estimates is with large profit.
Take it at face value, I'm not an MMO dev but I'm a system architect and programmer and one of my best friend actually runs a datacenter. (yay braging over the internet)
When the service to play streamed games as you wanted came out (onLive) I made some estimates of how much it would cost to run.
I checked on amazon prices, including bandwidth and more expensive instances with high end GPUs, and estimated that a player that plays 20h a week would cost $2.5 per month to serve.
Traditional MMOs like ESO that do not stream games can hold hundreds, if not thousands, of players per physical server. Servers of lower price might I add.
That's bellow the cent per player.
Again, take it with a grain of salt, I never ran an MMO, but you get my point.

Anyway, that's not the only costs ZOS has, since they continue developing the game. From studios of similar sizes, we can estimate that at most, ZOS operating costs are around $18M yearly. Whatever they make above that mark is pure profit.

The box price is what is designed to reimburse the initial development of the game. Or at least recoup most of it. If ESO costed $240M, at this point, they already got over half of it already and have yet to launch on consoles. If that launch on two platform is equivalent to the launch on the single PC platform, they will have reimbursed their initial investment and be in full profit mode.
And if Skyrim or DCUO pc to console ratings are any indication, ESO will sell a LOT more there than on the PC.

The choice was never to go B2P or see the game disapear in March.

ZOS is in no financial trouble. However, they are managing their game like a solo game. This is probably due to the parent company used to running Skyrim, or execs trying their hand at the latest short term income strategy.
In short, they just do the same thing you see on steam, launch at full price then reduce the price over time so that every income bracket can be touched.
Eventually it will get f2p, maybe as early than 6 months after the console release.
This strategy earns less money over time, but it gives a faster ROI for investors. Investors who have no stakes in seeing the game becoming succesful, they just want to get their money back with the agreed upon interests.

Whether it was then or now, ZOS is being dishonest and shortsighted.
And for that ,we're losing a game that had, for once, actual potential.
Heck, it was growing again if the steam charts trends are of any indication.

A1exeR

I agree with topic starter.
100 crowns - a stupid joke. At least 300 crowns for each paid month and may be we can buy 1 DLC for this crowns.