[QUOTE=tokamak;414339]Cheers Zenstar! Appreciated.
It can’t be proven with practical examples due to games being so hard to compare. But I can deduce it from basic human behaviour. We like to compete and we like to impress and intimidate our adversaries. When those adversaries suddenly are no longer sentient beings there just doesn’t seem to be a point in spending money on that. That’s why you want to have your players exposed to living opponents as much as possible, to play on that need to express.
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I disagree with your deduction. And hence you need proof and this is why I keep saying this is an argument of opinion that has played itself out since we do not have the proof (either because we do not have access to it or because we are lazy).
As for anecdotal evidence countering the whole “won’t spend money when you’re fighting bots” thing: it’s already been given but games like Bulletstorm sold colours for your energy leash. There was single player and co-op multiplayer. People still bought it.
Since anecdotal proof is only slightly better than pure conjecture / opinion I claim this point in my favour until you start providing more justification than “I think”.
What you’re actually saying then is that modes do compete but that it isn’t really a problem. A player can’t be in two servers at the same time, that’s how modes compete with each other. And in that Horse is right, if all modes are equally profitable and people don’t feel like they’re playing different games then it doesn’t matter to SD what exactly they’re playing.
I’ll give you this point. Having more than 1 mode means that modes will compete with each other.
However, when one more more modes give less incentive to purchase, then it does become a problem. It would actually be problematic if the horde mode (or just anything involving bots) was a superior game to the objective campaigns. Because then it starts drawing people to something that is harder to monetise.
Pure conjecture here. This is argument from ignorance OR begging the question. Either you’re saying “I can’t think of how to monetize it so therefore it can’t be monetized” OR you’re assuming that objective mode will be the best mode to monetize and therefore objective mode is the best mode because it’s the one that’s best monetized.
Horde mode could be the big moneymaker. Either because it has more purchase options (less worry about weapons sold needing to be balanced against other players) or because of the sheer number of players (it could be far more popular than objective mode for all we know). Since we know very little about their plans to monetize we can’t really tell.
Also: I own the previous point and thus your whole “won’t pay for previous dlc because bots” point doesn’t come into it here unless you can actually prove that point.
People will naturally filter into the more popular game modes and SD will track this and be able to react to it. You’re assuming this game will come out and be forever static from that point. To continue as a good f2p game there will need to be constant influxes of content and changes.
‘More players = more profit’ is a rule that works for a retail game. But because an F2P is free, more players doesn’t necessitate more profit.
Actually it pretty much does. All it requires is for SD to not completely fail at the monetization part. If they do then the entire argument doesn’t matter because it will be a failure.
If they do correctly monetize and continue to react to the players’ wants and needs then more players = more money. As a general rule of thumb a certain percentage of players will be willing to make an average purchase.
The percentage may go up or down from game to game and the average purchase price may change from game to game, but increasing the number of players will increase the number of purchases and will result in more money.
So in this sense, I think that any added content (not just bots or coop, just anything) needs to have the condition that it’s equal or more desirable to purchase things within than the core game.
Again: without any knowledge of how things will be monetized you can’t actually make claims like that. For all we know the so-called “core game” could be the worst at making money and having anything else that draws in money could be what’s funding the “core”.
Also: you’re assuming that something bought is for a single mode. What about skins? they’re applicable to all modes. Same with weapons and tags… Oh yeah: and your “no no no, not for bots” point still doesn’t stand here for previously mentioned reasons.
I’m open for ideas that do lift bot-modes to this status, but you can’t just say ‘hey, let’s do it and we’ll figure out how to get money from it afterwards’ because by then you may end up having a highly popular game that no one is willing to spend a penny on.
We’re providing feedback. Splash Damage is not reading this forum and saying “hey! Someone suggested floating turds in the sewers! We now HAVE to implement them dammit!”
We’ve said “hey, we’d like this mode because we think it is fun”. Hopefully SD will look at that and because they have far better knowledge of the market and costs than we do, and have far more contacts in the industry they will be able to generate the data that can provide some actual proof as to whether this is viable or not.
Hell… we don’t even know if they have the resources to do anything more than tweaks and maps at the moment.
Since WE (including you) don’t know how they will monetise things then saying “we’d like X… and you can figure out the money side” is perfectly viable. If it fits in with their ideas then happy days.
At the moment the only person demanding anything here is you by saying “NO! It will not make money at all (in spite of not actually knowing how this will work) and thus it SHOULD NOT be done!!!”.
At the very least you have to concede that you have massive chunks of missing knowledge on the situation and as such cannot actually come to such a solid conclusion. You MUST allow for the possibility that you are not right.
As I stated before: this is all largely opinion vs opinion and we’re stating what we’d like. This is why I say this has already played itself out because everything provided since I said that has simply been more of the same opinion repeated and repeated.
So… unless you have some fresh insight or proof and as long as you don’t try to claim to be king of all f2p knowledge again I think this is pretty much done.
TLDR: I think your opinions are wrong but they’re the same opinions that I told you I thought were wrong ages ago and this is simply opinion v opinion and noone is changing what they think and that’s why this thread should have died already!
