Can you imagine how awesome PR 2 will be?!

[MrSh@vid]

Yes subscription is what killed WoW.

WoW is dead? Those 12million+ walking around are bots?

[Masaq]

WoW is dead? Those 12million+ walking around are bots?

I think he was being sarcastic

[Gaz]

Ladies and gents,

Please do not get well ahead of yourselves here. Random speculation leads to opinions being taken by some as concrete

[Jigsaw]

If they can make this fantastic thing called the Project Reality Minimod for BF2 for free them they obviously don't need the revenue, i could handle one time payment but subscription is insane.

Im gonna lay it on you like this:

Currently my xfire tells me that I have played 803 hours of BF2. This ofc does not include numerous hours spent playing with it turned off whilst testing/training for PRT/not having xfire, so the actual figure is likely approaching 1000 hours. However we'll stick with the basic 803. I'd guess that 95% of that is PR time with the rest being vanilla or FH2.

I spent £25 on the Battlefield 2 Complete Collection when I purchased it from Amazon.

Now this therefore means that I have effectively paid £0.0311 per hour spent gaming. And going down. Many people that I know who I play PR with have similar figures, and large numbers have many more hours than I can lay claim to.

Now, as a comparison, I paid £15 for Company of Heroes, and a further £15 for Tales of Valor. Currently xfire tells me that I have played 38 hours of Company of Heroes, meaning I have payed £0.7895 per gaming hour.

Which seems more like value for money?

Most modern video games allow the user roughly 30 hours of game time before the single player drys up, multiplayer gets boring or the additional content turns out to be rubbish, and yet they still charge usually £30-40 per game. MW2 (fastest selling game of all time) costs £40 on PC, and yet the single player game tops out at roughly 5 hours for an average player.

Now given that the PR2 team are having to build a game entirely from scratch, why should they not charge a similar amount to every other video game. And given that (if its anything like PR1) it should offer huge replayability allowing it to last for years, with consistent updates, then why should they not charge an annual subscription?

With this in mind, how dare you make the assumption that everything within this game should just be given to you for free, when you have already been given so much?

Now as Gaz said, lets reset the expectation here. The thing hasn't even started being made and we're already haggling over the price.

[M_Striker]

With this in mind, how dare you make the assumption that everything within this game should just be given to you for free, when you have already been given so much?

I didn't get the impression that he wanted everything free. He would be willing to pay 50 or 60 dollars for PR2 at it's release. He just wouldn't want to pay a subscription, which I find perfectly reasonable.

You pay 50/60 dollars at once. Nice and simple. It's done and you can enjoy your game.

A subscription however, will go on and on and on, and be much more of a hassle. Just the thought of being drained of money over time annoys me. You could see why the other option is a lot more appealing.

[Conman51]

Ive been thinking a while about subscription now....and now i see it as more reasonable and cost effective, plus it helps make up all the enjoyment and content we got from PR1....ok this is kinda hard to explain but ill do my best.


With a pay once game,about 50$, kinda cheap for games today, a game company may release a expansion pack about a year later for abut 15 bucks, and then they give you a free patch with a map MAYBE. so the 60 dollar game, plus the 15 dollar expansion, that 75 dollars in a year of owning this game and the expansion. thats not even that much content for the price

with PR2 though, you will pay 3 bucks a month, over a year thats 36 bucks, that doesnt even cover the cost of the original price of that game you paid for all at once. Plus PR2 will come with continuous updates, unlike the pay all at once expansion. so doing a little math...you will save 39 bucks by paying through subscription, and got probably the same amount of content, maybe even more, than the pay at once game.

You could continue the chain of big pay at once expansion vs. the subscription expansion, and find that after a few years PR2 will probably be more expensive, but im estimating about 3, which is still alot, and hopefully by the 3rd year of PR2 the DEVs could start something else up.



Sorry if the above was confusing....but we should stop arguing about this now...we dont even know for sure how its going to be

[Cassius]

WoW is dead? Those 12million+ walking around are bots?

yah its buried next to british humour.

[00SoldierofFortune00]

[quote=""'[R-DEV"]Z-trooper;1192312']Why should we not be paied for our effort? I am one of the newest members of the DEV team but I still invested around 2 years of my spare time on this. Time I could be doing other stuff like chasing more girls or having this so called "life" I keep hearing about. You can't keep living on fast rope suggestions and deviation complaints, I need money for electricity so I can turn on my computer and keep working...

And why should we not be paied to provide continous updates and expansions and development, like now? (aka subscription) Expect us to just get paied once and then magically live on fresh air only and power our computers with farts and keep working to provide you with stuff.

And also don't get a crazy hype going that we cannot fullfil. BF2 had a lot of stuff like basic soldier control and vehicles handling in place. We have to do all of this from scratch equally or better than a full time game studio for you people to be satisfied hehe. Take it easy guys [/quote]


No one is saying you shouldn't get paid for your efforts, but the makers of BF2 charged us a one time fee which was fair and they put out patches (for better or worse) for free. A one time fee is much better than having to use my credit card and paying for a game every month which I may or may not play every month. This is especially a burden on those who are under 18 and I am sure there are a lot of them. And what happens if we end up playing this game for 4 years like BF2/PR? That amounts to almost $120 per person for this game lol. I don't think anyone here is really willing to put that much out except for a few.

I have no problem paying 50 bucks for a quality game (if it ever comes out), but I find subscriptions to be rediculous, even for WOW or MMORPGs, let alone FPSs.

[quote="Conman51""]With a pay once game,about 50$, kinda cheap for games today, a game company may release a expansion pack about a year later for abut 15 bucks, and then they give you a free patch with a map MAYBE. so the 60 dollar game, plus the 15 dollar expansion, that 75 dollars in a year of owning this game and the expansion. thats not even that much content for the price[/quote]


LOL, yea $50 bucks is cheap for a game. Do you have any other bills to pay? 50 bucks is not cheap. In fact, 60 bucks for those console games is a ripoff when tax is factored in. And the main problem with subscriptions (besides the age factor) is that not everyone has money in their accounts at that time. I would much rather pay upfront when I have the money rather than risk going over on my account because I needed to use my card.

with PR2 though, you will pay 3 bucks a month, over a year thats 36 bucks, that doesnt even cover the cost of the original price of that game you paid for all at once. Plus PR2 will come with continuous updates, unlike the pay all at once expansion. so doing a little math...you will save 39 bucks by paying through subscription, and got probably the same amount of content, maybe even more, than the pay at once game.

Jus because you pay 3 bucks every months doesn't gurantee you an update in that month. For all we know, updates could take months to come out as they do now.

You could continue the chain of big pay at once expansion vs. the subscription expansion, and find that after a few years PR2 will probably be more expensive, but im estimating about 3, which is still alot, and hopefully by the 3rd year of PR2 the DEVs could start something else up.

And I never thought I would be playing BF2/PR this long after it came out.

[Twisted Helix]

Longer rounds, possibly lasting days or weeks.

LoL , spoken like a true gamer

Regards the whole financial thing ... well I think you have to look at it all in terms of the evolving game industry guys. 15 years ago the idea of a subscription and pay to play was inconceivable. You payzed ya money and ya bought ya game.

However that was before the internet. The arrival of said wonderously wonderful wonder changed the face of the gaming experience. Now games and worlds could be persistent and most importantly , social. (I have been gaming since the very first computers were available to the public back in early 1980s, and I have seen a fair few of these changes, trust me )

However a caveat to running many morpgs and similar games is the necessity for a large amount of back end infrastructure and cloud technology to support them. They have constant costs and therefore need constant revenue, irrespective of the cost of actually developing the game.

Now ... in 5 years time ... will the kinds of games that were popular in the 90s still be popular ? And by this I mean things like CoD, which follow a very traditional format where the majority of the experience is delivered in the single player game. Don't get me wrong ... its one hell of an experience, but it relies upon increasing sophistication in the technology available to deliver that wow factor. But it is also the most successful game to date financially.

Lets think where that avenue is heading. Combine that level of delivery of experience, with a social environment, and the concept of providing back end support to enable this experience , and you start to see where OnLive is heading.

Now I am not a soothsayer, so I cannot predict the future, but from past experience I can safely bet its not going to be like it is today. Personally I think that in game advertising is going to be one main revenue source in future games ... coupled with a subscription style delivery like onLive has. If that would be the case ... the entire discussion about this aspect of things ... is meaningless today .

Its good to chew the fat, but understand the time scale on this is indeterminate, and that by the time we are ready to go ... the face of gaming will have changed.

[eddy_purpus]

My imagination of it -
+256 players per server
30x30km maps (at least)
High amount of assets
Destructible environment
Explosions cause craters
Radars
Player controlled artillery
3-4 km visual range.

Yeah... Pretty orgasmic if i can say, just patrolling the skies in a F16 or some other jet / ground attack Aircraft and just watch the battle from the air until someone reports hostile aircraft activity or requests a ground attack run.

Thats like a video game from the future...

I dont think we will be able to se a videogame like that in a few moar years.... 10 to be exact ...

[MrSh@vid]

yah its buried next to british humour.

Ha- I'm sorry sir excuse my ignorance!

[Jaymz]

I'll suspend my disbelief for a moment regarding the fact that people are freaking out about a possible payment scheme for a game that is still in pre-production.

Jus because you pay 3 bucks every months doesn't gurantee you an update in that month. For all we know, updates could take months to come out as they do now.

What if I told you that updates would be similar to the way they are in PR1? Where you not only get constant gameplay enhancements and bug fixes from a dedicated team of developers that play their own game, but you also get new factions, assets and maps.

If you'd prefer, we could always take the booster pack route and charge extra for each "content rich" release. Of course, doing that with a niche market will result in complete and utter failure. I'm quite sure that any server admin reading this wants to kick me in the ganglia just for the mere mention of that...(being a PR veteran, SoF, you know just as well as I do that server admins are the back bone of PR1. Stands to reason that they would/will be for PR2)

**the following is completely hypothetical**

Let's say we take that route and charge 40 dollars for the first release of PR2 which has only two factions and 5 maps.

Then, six months later, we release a "booster pack" for 10 dollars which contains another faction and 3 extra maps.

Then, six months later, we release another "booster pack" for 10 dollars which contains another faction and another 3 maps.


initial release : 40 dollars
secondary release : +10 dollars
tertiary release : +10 dollars

Meaning you will have paid 60 dollars in one year.

If this was done via subscription of 3 dollars per month,

1. You would have saved 24 dollars
2. There would be no division of players between who has and doesn't have certain booster packs so server admins could freely use any/all maps without players being removed for not having certain content
3. Players who decide to start playing PR2 can simply subscribe and go straight to the latest release.
4. Players who decide to stop playing PR2 can simply quit after a single month (having spent only 3 dollars as opposed to 40. This assuming we don't allow a free 1 month trial.)
5. A steady flow of income, although small due to the niche market we're after, will be a clear incentive and aid for developers to continue with more content rich updates.

[Twisted Helix]

6. Griefers and tards can be removed and excluded from the community, thus ensuring a more satisfying experience for others.

[00SoldierofFortune00]

Jaymz;1193164']I'll suspend my disbelief for a moment regarding the fact that people are freaking out about a possible payment scheme for a game that is still in pre-production.

I don't think anyone is "freaking out" about it, just the whole "subscription" thing rubs me the wrong way just like it does with Xbox Online and WOW. I rather just pay upfront, even if it is 60 bucks because I won't have to have in the back of my mind that I am signed on to something and have to go in and cancel it manually.

What if I told you that updates would be similar to the way they are in PR1? Where you not only get constant gameplay enhancements and bug fixes from a dedicated team of developers that play their own game, but you also get new factions, assets and maps.

Yea, but there is still no gurantee that you would get that every month. I prefer just paying for a game upfront (after making sure it gets good reviews) because I never know if a game is going to die quickly or end up being buggy. Not saying PR2 will be, but

If you'd prefer, we could always take the booster pack route and charge extra for each "content rich" release. Of course, doing that with a niche market will result in complete and utter failure. I'm quite sure that any server admin reading this wants to kick me in the ganglia just for the mere mention of that...(being a PR veteran, SoF, you know just as well as I do that server admins are the back bone of PR1. Stands to reason that they would/will be for PR2)

I would actually kind of be for booster packs if they were released once every year, as long as small updates to gameplay were free and maps here and there. I brought BF2: Special Forces and don't regret it, just wish there were more people to play. I just don't like using my credit card and signing up for anything because I never know if my card is not going to have money on it (it often doesn't lol).

**the following is completely hypothetical**

Let's say we take that route and charge 40 dollars for the first release of PR2 which has only two factions and 5 maps.

Then, six months later, we release a "booster pack" for 10 dollars which contains another faction and 3 extra maps.

Then, six months later, we release another "booster pack" for 10 dollars which contains another faction and another 3 maps.


initial release : 40 dollars
secondary release : +10 dollars
tertiary release : +10 dollars

Meaning you will have paid 60 dollars in one year.

If this was done via subscription of 3 dollars per month,

1. You would have saved 24 dollars
2. There would be no division of players between who has and doesn't have certain booster packs so server admins could freely use any/all maps without players being removed for not having certain content
3. Players who decide to start playing PR2 can simply subscribe and go straight to the latest release.
4. Players who decide to stop playing PR2 can simply quit after a single month (having spent only 3 dollars as opposed to 40. This assuming we don't allow a free 1 month trial.)
5. A steady flow of income, although small due to the niche market we're after, will be a clear incentive and aid for developers to continue with more content rich updates.

There should really be two options then. Either a subscription way, or a pay once up front way.
And if the game ends up being played for up to 4-5 years as BF2 ended up, then the subscription thing and pay once up front or booster pack thing would pretty much be around the same price in the long run (well the subscription would be more since 1 year=30x4 is 120)

By doing the whole subscription thing, you are going to alienate a lot of the market, especially the under 18 players. Their parents will freak out about having to use their credit card for anything just like mine used to do when I needed to sign up for something, no matter what it was. A lot of people have some weird hatred for Steam too which I don't get, but is there. A sub would make it worse.

[Cassius]

Ha- I'm sorry sir excuse my ignorance!

Thay shault be forgeeven.

[Arnoldio]

If its like now, but with more capabilities of the engine... any army sim game can go hide somewhere...

[TheLean]

I dont understand how PR2 will benefit from forced payments, whether all up front or subscription. PR is the best game currently, and its all free. Games that cost money are all worse and yes, its a confusing paradox but it seems to be correct. I have my own idea why, and that is since the DEVS do things because they want to, not because they have to pay their bills. If there is a monthly salary for the DEVS it is more likely player will start demanding things and more likely the DEVS will succumb to the will of the masses, making PR2 content more washed out. The constant requirements of new content would risk alot more subpar material being included in the mod.

But doesnt the DEVS DESERVE anything for all their time consumed, extreme skill and quality of work? Yes they do! You who are reading this, why havent you donated? (If you are one of the 2-3 % that have donated, I take my hat off and apologize. Also, minors without credit cards are excused if there parents wont lend theirs.) I see people who have played for years who still havent donated, and that is a shame. I cant see how anyone who have the time to play a game like PR cant afford 10 dollars. If you are so poor that you cant afford that, you simply wouldnt play, you would be busy collecting cans for refunds. If everybody donated once in a while, we wouldnt have to have this discussion, and I know I will donate again for christmas. I would be ashamed to be here with a post count of several hundreds without ever giving anything back and no, you playing the game does not give money to hookers and blow for the DEVS

[Zulnex]

I will be very glad to pay for the monthly PR2 subscription and donate every month (like I do now). All Devs work very hard, produce fantastic work and are exceptionally talented. I hope that more people will be able to donate in the future.

[Conman51]

I will be very glad to pay for the monthly PR2 subscription and donate every month (like I do now). All Devs work very hard, produce fantastic work and are exceptionally talented. I hope that more people will be able to donate in the future.

i probably will once i get a credit card,which will probably be next year when im in college

but yea the DEVs do deserve some cash, but paying for PR2 depending on just donations would fail in my opinion

[SomebodySomeone]

Can you imagine PR on Bad Company 2? That'd be awesome!