xbox 360 fees?

[Saner]

about reporting people to ban, they could have worked against us.



reporting about someone cheating and wanting them banned, they would need proof, otherwise people could lie that you are a hacker and ST would ban you, no questions asked.


but ya I think PSOX servers wasn't really watched over by ST, they were busy with blue burst or something.


but ya if they give the cities holiday themes, hopefully they take them off when the holiday is over because I like these locations when they are in their default appearance and stuff.

holiday themes are nice but they kind of contradict the history and cultures of this new universe. This is not Earth.

[Crispin]

On 2006-08-16 20:48, Ryudo wrote:
so your argument is against monthly fees but recurring fees equivalent to the monthly fee are ok?
Explain to me the difference between $8-10 a month for a game that's regularly updated with new quests and content and $50 every 6 months for a game that gets new content in bulk?

You guys aren't even bother to read, are you. It's been repeated Lord knows how many times, but let's try breaking it down into smaller parts to make it easier to understand.

When you're paying for the bulk content every few months, you can take a look at it and see if it's content that you believe is worth paying for. If you don't think this, you can continue playing the game that you've already paid for without having to pay more for stuff you never would have bothered touching. This gives the developers far more incentive to create content that the playerbase will genuinely want to drop fifty bones on.

The lack of a mandatory fee also helps by providing a larger playerbase; more people will be keen to pick up a game not requiring a fee, especially if they're already subscribed to another game that has a fee. It also keeps players in, since they don't have to worry about if the time they've spent playing is worth the money they have to spend to play (Which is different for each person). If they feel like jumping in for a few hours to see if they want to get back in to the game, they can do so worry free.

The expansion method also allows for greater flexibility when dealing with new resources when not using a hard drive (As is the case with a game such as PSU). Instead of reusing textures, maps, models, etc. over and over again, purchasable expansions allow for all new resources on another disc. This may very well not be without its flaws, but it does provide an avenue with more content than what PSO's been giving us in the past six years.

[Saner]

well I have an alternative for people who dont wanna pay a fee can consider choosing instead.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/chipndale.php

well it is free.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Saner on 2006-08-16 21:56 ]</font>

[McLaughlin]

It tends to be pretty apparent someone's cheating when you warp down to the Forest and there aren't any doors. >_<

[RuneLateralus]

On 2006-08-16 20:55, Saner wrote:
but ya I think PSOX servers wasn't really watched over by ST, they were busy with blue burst or something.

From what I heard, they haven't touched the Xbox servers in about 8 months. Apparently, the Christmas decorations and music are still up.

It is things like this that make me kinda want to avoid the 360 version, but at the same time, I would rather see the game in 720p rather than just progressive mode (although I am not sure if Sega has announced if the PS2 version would support it). Too bad the old PC isn't up to date...nor worth getting a new one until both Vista and Leopard come out.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: RuneLateralus on 2006-08-17 18:03 ]</font>

[mitchm]

well the 360 has HDD support... anyway Chromehounds has its own FREE server for the game and its made by Sega so why couldnt they just do the same thing. There are a ton of people on ChromeHounds at a time. It would be the same thing with PSU wouldnt it?

[Kers]

On 2006-08-17 19:32, mitchm wrote:
well the 360 has HDD support... anyway Chromehounds has its own FREE server for the game and its made by Sega so why couldnt they just do the same thing. There are a ton of people on ChromeHounds at a time. It would be the same thing with PSU wouldnt it?

I suppose Chromehounds is supported by your Gold subscription via Xbox Live, or doesn't require enough support to charge a fee.

Since PSU isn't only for 360, it has its own servers with their own fee for support.

[HyperShot-X-]

On 2006-08-16 21:26, Crispin wrote:

On 2006-08-16 20:48, Ryudo wrote:
so your argument is against monthly fees but recurring fees equivalent to the monthly fee are ok?
Explain to me the difference between $8-10 a month for a game that's regularly updated with new quests and content and $50 every 6 months for a game that gets new content in bulk?

When you're paying for the bulk content every few months, you can take a look at it and see if it's content that you believe is worth paying for. If you don't think this, you can continue playing the game that you've already paid for without having to pay more for stuff you never would have bothered touching. This gives the developers far more incentive to create content that the playerbase will genuinely want to drop fifty bones on.

...how exactly would you do that without actually purchasing the expansion pack for $50 a pop and trying it out for yourself?
It only takes common sense to see it's more logical way to pay small monthly fee for frequent updates & new contents than waiting for 6-12 months for new expansion pack that u're not even sure if u will actually like it or not. There will be whole lot of ppl already quit the game by the time update arrives in a half yr. It's smarter & safer business strategy to go monthly fee, & it keeps users happy everytime new update is made.

It'd be the best to start out as monthly fee w/ free trial period to gain initial profit and pull in user base, and then maybe 6-12 months later release new expansion PSU v2. or something to attract even more users.

...try to take some advice & don't stress yourself writing a book about something u got no control of, it not only wastes ur own time but every1 else's on forum who are reading thru the whole lecturing only to conclude at the end that it's just nonsense B.S. basically & left w/ the feelin of anger to punch some1 on the face out of pure frustration for wasting of their precious time. ...don't mean to sound too harsh but u get the idea.

[Cross]

On 2006-08-16 19:23, Kyuu wrote:
Yes yes, I know you can come up with myriad excuses why World of Warcraft is an "exception" or some other bullcrap, but whatever. I have little inclination to argue the point.

First, I don't have to 'come up' with anything. In terms of its performance on the market, World of Warcraft has defied all convention.
And have you ever heard the expression "the exception that proves the rule"? The fact that every game on the market follows the same set of trends except for World of Warcraft proves that it's not useful to use it as an example to compare any other game to. I've posited a few possible reasons why it may be such a unique case, but whether I'm right or wrong about those doesn't change the fact that it does defy convention.
Geez, if you're going to argue that we can compare any online RPG on the market to the game that singlehandedly more than doubled the global player base in (what had been until that point) a largely cannibalistic market, you're going to have to give something a bit more concrete than "hay it has a monthly fee too".

On 2006-08-16 20:48, Ryudo wrote:
It may be your point that it did well without a monthly fee, but when people figured out it basically DID have a monthly fee in the form of the expansions, it saw a sharp decline in popularity.
Just because it worked once for GW doesnt mean it will ever work again for any game ever. You can generally only fool people once.

so your argument is against monthly fees but recurring fees equivalent to the monthly fee are ok?
Explain to me the difference between $8-10 a month for a game that's regularly updated with new quests and content and $50 every 6 months for a game that gets new content in bulk?

Gah. What sharp decline? You mean that it sold one million units in the first six months, and then it took eight months before they doubled that? You realize that generally every game ever has the biggest spike in sales and popularity in the first few months after it's released, right? For the sales to be sustained at 75% the rate of the first six months isn't what I'd call a 'sharp decline'. Nor was anybody 'fooled'. There are interviews, previews, and press releases from more than a year before Guild Wars was actually released outlining the exact business and gameplay model that they used. If anyone was misled about what the game would be, they were sure as hell filtered out in the first year, and yet the sales are still still going on at one hell of a good clip, especially for a PC game.
Oddly enough, I thought the difference was made abundantly clear between Guild Wars's model and a subscription-based game. In the simplest way I can put it: It gives the consumer leverage and power. The players play the game. If they don't want to buy the new content because they don't feel that it's worth their money, they don't pay, and continue playing the game. If they do buy the new content, then it's because it had worth to them. The expansions are completely optional to enjoy the game (I noticed that you completely sidestepped that argument after your original, absolutely wrong one was disproven; Nice one!), and ArenaNet gets zero money from an active player until they step up to the plate and put forth a piece of content that the player thinks is worth his fifty bones. If they dawdle around and release two twenty-minute quests in six months (like, say, Sega), they're not going to get shit. The player doesn't have to pay monthly just for the right to eat up maybe a gigabyte of server transfer in a month along with an unaccountable promise of "Yep, we'll have frequent new content... Just... Any month now... Wait and see... it's gonna be awesome... Promise..." They pay only when the developer has created what the player considers to be fifty dollars worth of content. And just for the record, your estimate of '8-10 dollars a month' is an extreme lowball. Only the unpopular budget games like Blue Burst charge anywhere near that. The average modern MMO charges between $12-15.

On 2006-08-17 21:59, HyperShot-X- wrote:
...how exactly would you do that without actually purchasing the expansion pack for $50 a pop and trying it out for yourself?
It only takes common sense to see it's more logical way to pay small monthly fee for frequent updates & new contents than waiting for 6-12 months for new expansion pack that u're not even sure if u will actually like it or not. There will be whole lot of ppl already quit the game by the time update arrives in a half yr. It's smarter & safer business strategy to go monthly fee, & it keeps users happy everytime new update is made.

Test the content on players by holding free events that give players a limited access to the main features of the new content, like Guild Wars has done (and continues to do). Play the game without the expansion for a few weeks, see some player reviews, decide whether you want to pay for the new content or whether you want to keep playing. For that matter, you seem to be confused. It doesn't matter if people "quit" the game in between expansions - that just keeps server costs down. If somebody plays for all six months between expansions, that's great because they're a loyal customer. If they quit a month later after playing through the main campaign once, then they got their money's worth. That doesn't mean that they can't come back to play again later whenever they feel like playing, and if a new expansion comes out that they think looks fun, they can buy it, hop back on, play for another month, or keep playing until the one after that. As for 'keeping people happy with every update', let's take a look at some popular MMOs. PSOBB is cheap; five months of subscriptions cost as much as one chapter of Guild Wars. In the last six months, the game has gotten:
- An Easter 'event' (Holiday events are done free in Guild Wars)
- Updated drop lists for some monsters (Also free in Guild Wars)
- Five 'War of Limits' quests (Quite a few quests in Guild Wars are free, but we'll give the benefit of the doubt to PSOBB and assume that this would be expansion content in Guild Wars, which I honestly doubt)
- One 'double drop rate' event (Would be free in Guild Wars)
- Two solo quests, and updates to one other quest (the update would be free)
So let's say Sega told you "Hey, we've got seven quests, in areas that you've already played. Two of them have new stories and stuff, but the other five are basically just a lot of killin' shit. You can play these quests if you pay us fifty dollars. If you don't want to pay, you can keep playing and you'll still get all the other updates and events; you just won't be able to play these seven quests. How about it? Fifty bucks." Would you give then $50 for those seven quests, or would you just keep playing until they had real content worth that amount of money? Let's take a look at FFXI; four months of fees in FFXI is equivalent to one Guild Wars expansion. With FFXI's fee (in other words, not including things that came with its latest expansion), you get:
- An 'Adventurer Appreciation' event (would be free in Guild Wars)
- A 'Linkshell community' service for guilds (would be free in Guild Wars)
- Chocobo raising (Would be free to at least PvP characters in Guild Wars, and possibly to PvE characters)
- The 'Mog Locker' was given increased functionality (would be free in Guild Wars)
- Storage, teleport, and Stables NPCs (would be free in Guild Wars)
- New Missions (would not be free in Guild Wars)
- New 'ranks' (would be free in Guild Wars)
- A new region (may or may not be free in Guild Wars; to give FFXI the benefit of the doubt we'll say that it wouldn't be)
- New equipment and quests specifically for classes released in the expansion (would be free in Guild Wars)
- Updates to the 'Besieged' game mode (would be free in Guild Wars)
- A 'festival event' (would be free in Guild Wars)
- Several new boss monsters and a rebalancing of boss monster difficulty (free in Guild Wars)
In this case, you'd be looking at maybe 2-3 new missions, one new region of the game, and maybe one feature available to some characters. If Square gave you the choice between playing for free, receiving every one of the minor updates and rebalances, or paying $50 for one new area, one new feature, and three missions, would you really be willing to pay that? I could do a check like this for World of Warcraft too if you're not convinced, but I think the point has been made. In contrast, this is what you get with your $50 in Guild Wars when you bought the first expansion:
- More than 100 minor quests.
- Two new classes.
- 150 new skills for old classes
- Two new (not more powerful, but different) armour sets for old classes.
- 50 new maps
- 20 Missions (13 for the main plot-based campaign, 5 for arcade/gameplay style challenges, 2 for competition that blends PvE and PvP)
- 4 new Guild Halls for Guild vs Guild matches
- An entirely new, large-scale PvP mode that affects which nation controls parts of the game world
- Two high-level 'elite' missions for organized, skilled PvE players
- Dozens of new enemies, bosses, rare items, new pets, etc.
- Free updates thus far have included two celebration events with their own limited-time quests and special visual rewards, mini-games, and a new temporary PvP mode, increased room for account storage, new features added to Guild Halls, an Alliance system for multiple allied guilds, mini-events for treasure hunting/rare items, increased access to elite missions, new modes for PvP characters, and countless minor updates for skill rebalancing, server maintenance, bug/exploit fixes, etc.
I don't know about you, but I don't really think that it's 'logical' at all to want to pay monthly just because they say they're going to give you frequent updates. It turns out those updates generally aren't really all that frequent, aren't very signifigant, or have been given for free in games without monthly fees! That is why the Guild Wars model is much more friendly to the players, and my earlier post about the sales and 'months of profit' is why it's friendly to the developers.

...try to take some advice & don't stress yourself writing a book about something u got no control of, it not only wastes ur own time but every1 else's on forum who are reading thru the whole lecturing only to conclude at the end that it's just nonsense B.S. basically & left w/ the feelin of anger to punch some1 on the face out of pure frustration for wasting of their precious time.

Sorry, but I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that your time isn't all that precious.

[trizzie]

God Complex anyone =3

wow has </3
- AQ guild transfers to a server where AQ hasn't opened... bliz pulls a fast one on Dentarg

THANKS FOR RUINING MY SERVER BLIZ

PSU show me the love.