Dirty Bomb Philosophy & Business Model - Your Thoughts?

(Scrupus) #81

I was planning to write a lot on how well the WoT gold system works but then Tokomak got me :slight_smile:

But yes, I agree it is a very nice f2p system that feels “right” and fair, in most aspects. I started playing WoT about 1.5 year ago, with several longer breaks, and think I’ve spent about 3 x 20 Euro on it so far. I’ve used some gold for buying more garage slots (as WoT have a certain “collector” aspect, so you want to keep some tanks that you really enjoyed, forever), but mostly for a month of premium account, for those periods where I plan to play a lot. The premium account is just a booster for ingame xp and credits, no payforwin at all. I really like this freedom - even if you get a bit addicted to the “extra” premium income, it’s not a problem to play without it from time to time.

WoT is a bit different than normal shooters so their ideas can not be adopted directly, but I’ve been thinking on how some of it could be used in DB, and will just toss out a few ideas - some of it might have been suggested already, if so forgive me:

Weapon depot: Let’s say you do it a bit like in Brink, and add tons of pretty balanced weapons to the game. For each weapon people have to first research them with in-game xp, then they can purchase them for in-game credits. But by default you will only have a couple of storage slots for each weapon class (like the 2 loadouts we have today), so there is a limit on how many weapons you can keep available in your depot. If your depot is full, you have to sell one gun to buy another from the same class. Then you can buy more storage slots for gold, to have more freedom in choice. It is ofc important that no guns are much better than others of the same class, but I think you managed that pretty well with the last Brink update.

This could perhaps also be splitted into 2 different types of slots - one set for your total collection, which are the those you can pick from before the match. While another type could be those weapons you can “carry” with you into a match, and then change during a respawn.

I would limit this to guns only, as other types of special equipment and boosters should rather be campaign rewards, like the in ET and ETQW - temporary upgrades pr. campaign, play2win hehe. I really love the campaign progress system you have in those games, and hope it will be back in DB as well :slight_smile:

Another pay for gold thing could be extra character slots, where you can setup pre-defined loadouts so they’re easily available before a match. For free you get 3 slots for example, then you have to pay gold for extra.

You could perhaps also adopt the in-game credits system, where you have to pay for your ammo but get credits back for dealing damage. Or just skip the ammo cost (it works good in WoT due to the superlow RoF with expensive shells but it would probably hurt team work in DB) but the credit system itself is good - and credit income is based on the amount of damage you deal to enemies, not kills.

Well that was maybe not a lot of ideas or very deeply thought out, but maybe some of it could be interesting.

Just remember it’s really really important to not get the pay2win stamp on the game - avoid such things at all cost!

It’s also important that players doesn’t feel too much pressure to pay - better with carrot than stick. Some clever marketing and special events can do the trick.

The CEO of WoT wrote a really good article on their business model some months ago, and I really liked their thinking. They said that even if only 1 out of 3 players (don’t remember the ratio exactly but something like that) actually paid anything at all, they still gave full support to everyone, paying or not - because it’s better with a long-term player base that stays, than a short-term boost of income and then it’s all over. It’s a delicate balance, but I really hope (and think you will) find it :slight_smile:

(tokamak) #82

Excellent! I was about to write quite a bit on how this works in other F2P games but you in turn, beat me to it.

Paying for character slots is a very clever move. Rather than time and exotic stuff, the paying customer can also buy a lower opportunity cost a means to expand his collection. Non-paying players will then constantly have to chose which characters they pick for their collections and which ones they will have to let go. People don’t like losing things, they’re willing to pay more to get to keep it than to obtain it new again.

Adding to this: Hand out out free stuff after each match, and then hand out something really rare and special to a player at the end of a campaign. Addictive as hell!

So based on special performance, players get (slightly random) gold bonuses, items, and even characters handed out to them during the screen. Performance increases the chance of getting something. It’s a huge incentive for people to stay in the match and in the campaign and to keep on playing.

So now you got three ways of obtaining stuff: Working for it, paying for it and being lucky.

I don’t agree with Locki in the sense that all unlockable content needs to be obtainable without having to pay for it. It’s a principle but there’s a way around it without compromising too much on it: You can have a few characters that are purchase only (provided that they’re NOT stronger than anything else). To offset this, there should also be characters that can only be gotten through hard work and aren’t purchasable. And then there should be a few characters that can only ever be obtained through random chance.

And then there’s all kinds of combinations you can make with the three, purchase+random chance, hard work+random chance, etc etc (three circle venn diagram, mostly overlapping but a few areas are slightly sticking out). The brunt of the content should be obtainable through all the three routes.

This ramps up the novelty value of the game. It keeps some of the content highly exclusive and excites people to spot someone using it in the game. This in turn inspires people to get themselves something unique as well.

We really need to know more about what’s possible before we can work this further out.

EDIT: The exclusive random/paid/effort items become even more fun when you get to trade them. That way a hard working freeloader can trade something he obtained with hours of effort for something someone else bought with lots of money or an item that rarely drops.

(Apoc) #83

It should also be noted that people like unlocks, these shouldnt be unlockable by paying. Just from time spent. I would advise weapons, weapons that are not better, just different, or tools that are not better, just different. Allowing you more choice.
You need unlocks. And heres why;

  • For one, people are used to them, they expect them and they dont feel like they are progressing without them. I know in a perfect world peple play purely for the fun of the game, but alot of the time people also like something to work towards, and new things to unlock and discover as they go through.

  • Secondly, it doesnt overload new players. They get a core weapon set/ class set for each class. This allows them to work out the class, get a feel for it, choose a class they like, work out how it works and get some experience, then unlock a weapon and start playing around with how they want to play the class and the weapons they want to use. If they have everything unlocked at day one. They will get overloaded with info and choices and it can really put off some players.

  • People give the game a chance. Even if they dont like the class or the game, they see they dont have everything unlocked and as a result they keep playing to test out the other stuff, usually it is this extra time period of playing that you need to get people to experience as it is in those hours that they understand the game and realise whats good about it. Especially as it is different from the run of the mill shooter.

  • Opens up revenue streams for boosters etc.

(Ashog) #84

Don’t know about most players, but I personally don’t like unlocks. I prefer all weapons available to me from the start. But then I also like a small amount of weapons - 7-8 different weapons like in ET games - in this way you can master them with more concentration and also have some predicting power during the fights. If there are million weapons and unlocks and attachments for them, I feel like there is no way to predict anything - you never know what to expect from the opponent at all. Somehow the Brink’s weapon choice was feeling like that and there was no sense to try to assess what weapon the enemy might have - just ignore this aspect and attack straight on. In ETQW there were basically 5 types of main bullet weapon (talk strogg side for example) - lacerator, accurized lacerator, hyperblaster, railgun and nailgun - and depending on my knowledge as of which weapon the opponent in the distance is possessing, I would approach the objective or extermination of this enemy in very different ways. Same for W:ET - MP40, MG42, Sten, Mauser rifle. With tons of guns it is impossible and even purposeless.

So in my opinion, the unlocks (with XP or/and money) should concentrate more not on weapon types, but on smaller, less game influencing attachments or buffs, the same way it was in Enemy Territories (speed, reload, awareness, small health/armor buffs, ammo, medkit size, spread, etc.) plus cosmetics such as dogtags, sounds, animations, merchandise, etc.

(tokamak) #85

Of course you want the brunt of the game to be free. You’re a client so you want as much as possible for as little as possible. It’s only rational. Cosmetic stuff is safe, you can go completely over board with it and not break the game. But it’s also the least relevant part in the game, it’s not what truly creates desire to buy certain things.

However, if you want to help SD as a company then it would help more to be completely honest about what would truly make you more willing to pay for the content they offer. What would make you sigh and draw your credit card in a game?

(warbie) #86

If we’re being completely honest, there isn’t a single thing I can think of that I’d want to pay extra for. Aesthetic stuff I’m not bothered by and competitively I can’t see a way around using vanilla content. Everything else will just be fluff to mess about with on public servers. Maybe an option to pay to be involved in the future development of the game? Play testing maps etc. Or perhaps just an option to donate? I’ve no problem sinking £50 into a game if it lasts a good while, but can’t see myself wanting to pay for classes with slightly different stats or guns with new skins.

(Scrupus) #87

I really want the f2p model to work for this game, so we just have to think hard to figure out good ways to make money without making it pay2win. I personally wouldn’t pay much for cosmetic stuff either but I gladly pay for stuff that make the game experience more comfortable and save me playing time. For many people it is hard to spend a lot of time on a single game, and I think both paying and non-paying players would feel it’s fine to pay for xp boosters as long as they don’t boost the skills directly.

Another thing we maybe could spend premium account on could be a cloud service - some place where you can upload ingame demos and screenshots directly (and easily), and publish for the rest of the world. Or the ability to post screenshots directly from game into social media, with a quick comment. Non paying players could still do exactly the same on their own, by uploading manually from their computers, while lazy players (like me) could just pay for the ability to do it with a click of a button hehe.

(Ashog) #88

I would pay 5 Euro to look like Scrupus ingame :slight_smile:

(Mustang) #89

I favour persistent unlocks over getting everthing off the bat, as long as they come thick and fast, e.g. every 30min of gameplay and everything unlocked in under 24hr of gameplay.

It holds my interests and keeps me playing whilst learning a new game, then by the time everything is unlocked I know the game and then figuring out how to master it is what keeps me playing.

Not saying that’s the only thing that keeps me playing a new game, but it definitely works as a tactic to keep people long enough to get them hooked.

(tokamak) #90

That’s what keeps you playing but what will keep you paying? Hey ho Tom Bombadillo!

Ignore the last part. It’s just there to not make myself sound like a gangster rapper.

(Dragonji) #91

Pofessional clan managing integrated with the game, that’s something I’d pay for :slight_smile:

(I keep on repeating myself :rolleyes:)

(tokamak) #92

That’s what you pay for in WoT.

The pro is indeed that this is something dedicated clans are willing to pay for and the con is that this greatly lowers the accessibility of the competitive part of the game.

(Runeforce) #93

Nothing! And I really don’t want to play the role of the devils advocate! (but I guess I still sort of am.) Some of the things that would not make me outright boycott the game would be stuff like: (as warbie already mentioned) subscription that boosts xp* (as long as not buying it does not make the game tedious) and asthetics. And if the game were to have advertising, I would be willing to pay to get a “clean” experience, perhaps with the ads replaced with REAL art (argh, damn him, the devil :smiley: )

*But I’m not a fan of the unlocks stuff. I agree with Ahogs post.

But I’m sure SD will get it right, if they don’t listen too much to the community on this one (and some of the stuff said over in the f2p thread) :slight_smile:

(Reacto) #94

What about making a league system where the top league has a admittance fee per team? I think creating teams/clans itself should be free, if its something that’s required for people to play competitively, however I don’t think anyone would protest against having a league system where you pay to join and have the chance to win some prizes. Could do the same with cups, as it would open up competitive play for a lot more players than sites like ESL do.

(tokamak) #95

You do realise that you’re now dismissing all viable alternatives, saying that SD shouldn’t listen to that and then proclaim your faith in that they will come up with something really good?

(.Chris.) #96

That’s how Brink happened.

(Dragonji) #97

And who would fund those prizes, SD? I don’t think they can make money on this…

(Runeforce) #98

bla bla bla. can’t you ever write in plain english, you’d be easier to understand. This is not a poetry club, y’ know?

I’m not saying that SD should not listen to the community, Im saying that “some people” is going overboard with their “viable alternatives” to make people “desire certain products” and “sigh” about it to the extend they “can’t help but whip out their credit card.”

Locki’s OP sounded very sound, but a lot of stuff from certain individuals (mostly just one) is on the path of ruining the game IMO.

(.Chris.) #99

The players paying fund the prizes. The more people who sign up the higher the prize, SD take a cut of the overall prize fund to cover running costs for the system in place facilitating it.

(Reacto) #100

@Dragonji, this is what I meant.