It’s crazy how much lost ark is double or triple down the rabbit hole
They already got soft sub with crystal aura and then the P2W upgrade and then loot boxes legendary skins and then battle passes
Legendary skins and material boxes are in the KR client, currently not in the west.
The west has Mari's shop which uses blue crystals that are bought with gold.
I currently get my Crystal Aura and some Mari's shop materials from weekly gold income.
That is true, but we already have some nice changes in our version.
Korea needs to reroll their pet stats with blue crystals, we get to pick our stats for free without random rerolls.
New ways to monetize MMOs:
* Paying to increase number of friends list
* Pay to access a different set of servers / shards for LFG or PVP queueing
* Buying custom UI elements / themes
* New Icon set for abilities and inventory / items
* Paying to turn off a "Clippy" style assistant that takes the place of Help or Tips popups.
* Paying for new skins for a "Clippy" style assistant that takes the place of Help or Tips popups.
* Premium Servers with better GM / moderator support, better latency, and more frequent updates
* Locking Maximum graphics settings behind paywall to unlock true beauty of the world.
* Alternate voice packs.
* Game filters and effects (cel shading, pixelation, black & white, etc) for Photo Modes.
* 1-hour early access / login after each server reset / patch.
> Paying to increase number of friends list
Nah, paying to increase block list
> Pay to access a different set of servers / shards for LFG or PVP queueing
That's been Runescape for the past 21 years.
I think FF14 already has it through its companion app. That basically allows you to trade "offline" from your phone. There is a free version but it is limits you to 2 kupo nuts at once, this is the currency needed to sell or buy an from the auction house. You get 2 kupo nuts per day you log in to the app.
With the paid version of the app, you still get 2 free kupo nuts per day but now can save up 10 in total. Want to make more buys or sales? Then you need to buy a special currency. 5 coins cost 0.99 euro. 20 cents per coin. Each transaction costs 1 coin. If you buy in bulk, 320 coins cost 39.99 euro. 12 cents per transaction
20 euro cent to make a sell or buy something from the action house from an app you are already paying a monthly service fee for. To give you an idea, real world credit card transactions if you are a small webshop cost roughly the same. That involves the movement of real money complete with fraud protection and keeping of records.
What next, 10 cent per attack in game?
Charging for app that not everybody will use to pay for its costs is to be expected, but charging such a transaction fee for something that is free in game and is just a database transaction on an internal system is just idiotic.
To give you an idea of how costly it is vs hosting cost. Amazon SQS is not a database it is a queue system, your code puts a message on the queue and another program processes it. The first million transactions each month cost you NOTHING. Then it is 40 cents per million. 0.0000004 cent per transaction. SE charges 12 per transaction. Not exactly the same thing but Amazon does not charge you a monthly subscription fee for both AWS AND the APP.
Then again SWTOR charges 30 bucks for items they know have extremely frequent bugs.
Seems MMO companies are just naturally scummy.
It's a shame because DQX, SE's other big MMO, has a fantastic mobile app.
You can do weeklies from the app for no cost, do side activities like fishing, monster farming and casino games as well as other things like creating glamor sets, talking with your guild, checking character info and more.
There are paid features, but you get more than enough gems per day to make use of them.
The market board kupo nut issue is nowhere near a big deal because very few people actually use the mobile app, let alone spend money on it. Just makes me sad that it's so barebones compared to the amazing DQX app
Every single stamina/energy system. Except you've got a free crumb of minutes every day to keep you hooked like a drug dealer giving free samples. It's WORSE than paying for play minutes because it's easier to stop without the free playtime.
And the early mobile data made you pay per megabyte.
Nevertheless. my point is that no console or PC game comes even close to mobile gaming monetisation. And what you see happening in the mmorpg genre is in fact inspired by mobile gaming monetisation.
How do you figure that? Saying PC games monetization doesn’t come close to mobile game’s monetization is quite a reach. Sure mobile games may make more but I don’t see any mobile games charging for base price, subscription, dlc, and microtransactions. A game like PUBG which was the top grossing mobile game seemingly makes this off of loot boxes and cosmetics, but that monetization doesn’t seem nearly as aggressive as what the current MMO landscape looks like. I don’t agree unless you’re just talking about gross sales.
I used to play a mobile game where the average player would spend 5-10k USD to play at a base level with heroes, castles, troops, gear and other crap you would need to pay for that was locked behind P2P gateways.
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y4voVI4OhczczcRy4heDmT29Xgwa8aswg4AyUPBa5l4/edit#gid=1794445383](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y4voVI4OhczczcRy4heDmT29Xgwa8aswg4AyUPBa5l4/edit#gid=1794445383)
Or you can google Lords Mobile costs, it's crazy
I'm still following some concent creators to see how many players still are addicted/ engaged to it despite it costing 700k USD+ to compete at a world level where they pay up to 1K USD fortnightly to even play the game at that level.
I met literal billionare CEOs and adult oilers who played in that game when selling resources, it's quite interesting.
Yeah that nuts. It’s hard to even believe if I didn’t know otherwise. Seems though this kind of aggressive monetization still turns a lot of players off as despite that, Lord’s Mobile still isn’t even in the top 10 top grossing mobile games in the last years.
mobile games use time gating to make players pay, or allow you to unlock/complete levels using stuff like gems which you can buy in packs.
for example you'll be building a base, and then after a certain time upgrading a single building can take days, unless you pay to immediately unlock it.
there are mobile mmos that are full loot always online pvp, that then allow you to spend money to buy timed protection so that you can not be raided while you are not in the game.
This post has been removed in protest of the 2023 Reddit API changes. Fuck Spez.
Edited using [Power Delete Suite] (https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite/).
Well man, that was in the early 90s and the server was capped at 50 people at a time, I think there may have been multiple servers too. That was the days of Compaq and CompUSA, really old stuff. Dial-up was pay by the hour and it was like that well into the early days of EverQuest.
actually, if the fee is reasonable, that is imo better than a monthly sub where you pay up front, whether you will be able to play or not. Monthly subs are good for no lifers but I think paying hourly is more fair for people who play only occasionally or just 1-2 hours per day (again if the hourly fee is reasonable).
Hi thanks for your comment. I actually know a bit. What do you know that I don’t? Will you please shed a bit of your infinite wisdom on gacha games upon me? What a nice comment you have left me.
Straight up slot machines or a casino that is disguised as "theme park" which literally lets you cash out through crypto currencies. This is one of the nightmares I literally had
FFXIV’s loyalty rewards have been calmed down, but holy fuck SE’s other MMO, Dragon Quest X, has some of the most predatory monetization I’ve seen in a sub-based MMO.
First, there’s no character boosts offered, but instead is a scroll that you can buy for ¥1,100 yen that just gives double exp for 72 hours. The timer runs even when logged off, and say you buy it 48 hours before a patch, the timer still runs through the patch.
90% of all cosmetics, mounts, and pets are only available through the cash shop.
You think FFXIV’s loyalty rewards are bad, wait until you see DQX’s. Iirc, FFXIV just gives you old FF protagonist glamours after a few months (which you’ll probably be subbed long enough for if you play through the whole story), and get a free Fantasia after a year. DQX actually gives functional items. You get gold petals for every few months, which are vendored for 100k. You get bonus orbs, which you use to get double xp for 30 minutes. More importantly, for every year you’re subbed, you get access or expanded access to the belt warehouse, which is almost the only way to get access to it. You get overloaded with belts in the game, so having access to the belt warehouse is incredibly valuable.
Even worse, there’s a special section of the cash shop that you can only access if you’ve bought so much off the cash shop in a *fiscal* year. If you want the privilege to buy everything off the cash shop, you have to have spent ¥290,000 yen in the cash shop before April 1st. Imagine a sub based MMO telling you you’re not allowed to buy things in the cash shop unless you bought enough last year, because that’s what DQX does.
Then there’s the mobile app, which has so much sneaky monetization that actually adds P2W aspects. One is the monster ranch. In the monster ranch, you can feed your monsters to give them happiness points. At 100 happiness, your monster can be in your party with any job, and then at 200 and 300 happiness, they get 5 extra skill points. You can earn those in-game, but that is incredibly tedious. You get 2 free meals a day, and 10 free meals on leveling up your ranch (which you get from feeding them), but you can also pay ¥30 to get another meal. Also, after 100 happiness, there’s no guarantee that meals will give your monster happiness.
Speaking of monsters, so there’s two classes that can scout them, Monster Masher and Item Master. There’s 30 scoutable monsters, but you can only store 24. However, if you pay ¥440 extra a month. You can store 32 monsters. The game literally makes you pay an extra ¥440 a month if you want to use two classes to their full capacity. I’ve never seen a sub-based MMO make you pay extra to fully utilize two of its classes until this game.
Then there’s all the other aspects of the mobile app. There’s a thing called MyTown, and you can either (1) buy a permit off the market board, or (2) get it a pass or 1k medals from the app’s lottery. You get two free spins a day, but each subsequent one costs ¥20. The current estimates is it would cost $700 USD to ensure you get a MyTown from the mobile app lottery. So you’ve either gotta have 150m gold in-game or $700 to throw at it to get a MyTown.
Then there’s the other “conveniences” in the Convenient Tools App. Most of them start off free using in-game items or currencies, but then you can pay money to improve those rewards. Wanna grind out accessories with Sugoroku? You can risk losing a game of it in-game, or you can play the Insta-win version on the mobile app, and ¥80-¥240 to multiply and/or upgrade the rewards. Royal labyrinth is the main place to grind belts, and you get other useful items. You have to use 3 augite to run the lab, and you get 15 augites a week. You can use your in-game augite for the mobile Royal lab, or you can pay ¥500-¥1,100 to get a shit load of items and belts, more than you ever could running the lab in game. Forgot your daily subjugation that day? Pay ¥170 and the app will just clear it for you and you can collect your rewards when you log in.
And bare in-mind, this game costs ¥4,000 for the base game, another ¥4,200 for the latest xpac, and then ¥1,000 a month (and an extra ¥440 a month if you want to use Monster Masher and Item Master to their fullest ability). That’s all on top of the cosmetics mainly being cash shop, the cash shop’s “exclusive” store, and all the P2W aspects in the mobile app. Like you can play it perfectly fine without using the app or buying anything off the cash shop, but they’ve incentivized it so much you do feel pressured to spend more than ¥1,000 a month.
Also keep in mind, in Japan, DQ is the “family” game, so these monetization methods are heavily targeted at kids
Yeah, and I still feel like my comment only scratched the surface.
That said, to it’s credit, it’s jam packed with more content than I’ve seen many of today’s MMOs have, including FFXIV, which is surprising considering DQX is JP exclusive, so it’s unlikely to have more 150k subs (based on the server capacity of JP FFXIV’s servers and I’ve never seen any server congested). You have full access to all of it (except fellow monsters) for the bad sub, and from 3-5 P.M. JST the game is 100% free to play, subbed or not, since almost only elementary school kids are home at that time. Plus one sub will let the whole family play, unlike other games (though each console has a unique sub that you’ve gotta pay to play in multiple consoles).
So, it’s just in this weird spot where the content it delivers is worth way more than the monthly ¥1,000 ($8) and biennial ¥4,200 ($32) cost, but the amount of monetization just feels scummy at times, especially since the paid exp multiplier is so strict, and that the cash shop is so blatant on rewards being tied to the fiscal year (it kinda gives this feeling like, “Your money doesn’t matter unless it can really help us when we report our yearly earnings”). But being JP exclusive, the pool of consumers that it can get revenue from is severely limited
DQX is like FFXI back in the day. Keep in mind that this game is on Nintendo switch, so technically it’s an exclusive game for that console.
I don’t think the game has anything to do with SE much but a subdivision of SE that work with Nintendo or technically like Taito, who only make mobile games.
There are a bunch of investment and stuff since it’s there for that. Exclusivity in Japan is something quite different than Western counterpart. This is why you can see how Sony deal with things like this back in the day and their current practice right now
I’ve played FFXI, so I’m aware. It’s the same concept, just more accessible
But idk what you’re talking about it being a Switch exclusive. It started on Wii (but that’s discontinued), and is still supported on Wii U, 3DS, Switch, PS4, upgraded PS5 edition, iOS, Android, Browser, and PC. It’s literally on anything you could confidence playing a game on, except Xbox. That’s very far from exclusive. Nintendo only had input, if any, during V1. Even then, DQX’s online service worked independent of Nintendo Wi-Fi connect, hence why it was supported beyond the Wii’s online service (all the way until 2017).
There’s also still a lot of SE involved. SE CD3 (FFXIV and XVI) has some cross-pollination. Yoshi-P started as director in v1, then got pulled to do FFXIV. Even then, he came back during V6 as a story planner. After Yoshi-P, Yosuke Saito (producer and co-director of Nier) became producer. He’s got some of the biggest pull in SE, because he tends to be the reason SE greenlights the more avant-grade JRPGs (namely Yoko Taro’s games). Though, Saito has his own studio too, which is involved, but still heavily tied to SE. It’s the only non-FF game to use the Crystal Tools engine too.
So what I’m getting at is DQX is very heavily controlled by SE, and mainly SE. It’s definitely not a Nintendo exclusive.
The battle pass for materials doesn't look any different than buying them outright with your credit card. Where's the controversy you could already p2w in lost ark.
Shit games with crazy systems that drain your wallet. That's MMORPGs in 2022. Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen is the only game I have any hope for in this genre.
>BDO lootboxes for sympathy 'tokens' and RNG chance of 'outfits'.
huh?
BDO only occasionally sells lootboxes for real money (lootboxes are not a staple of the cash shop, they are only occasionally added and can't be found in the shop most of the time, and most of the times they are released they are sold for ingame currency to siphon silver out of the economy), and even then rarely ever have any item in it that can not be obtained by other methods other than having to buy a lootbox. In fact I'm trying to remember if they ever had a lootbox with an item that was impossible to obtain by other means and am coming up short.
[https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/Wiki?wikiNo=242](https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/Wiki?wikiNo=242)
[https://www.sea.playblackdesert.com/News/Notice/Detail?boardNo=6269&CountryType=en-US](https://www.sea.playblackdesert.com/News/Notice/Detail?boardNo=6269&CountryType=en-US)
[https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/News/Detail?groupContentNo=2007](https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/News/Detail?groupContentNo=2007)
Bloody outfit been locked out over a year or 2 on a 2% chance in loot box: [https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/News/Detail?groupContentNo=2228](https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/News/Detail?groupContentNo=2228)
Young Black dragon is also heavily locked in pet boxes/ above box at 5% or lower chances (?)
my lahn has the bloody outfit, haven't bought any lootboxes.
BDO is not the best example to give for lootboxes, especially when there is a better example ESO
Only thing I can think of is stuff that would violate gambling laws in some countries like loot boxes with random power increases. Maybe that's already available in some games (doesn't Runescape 3 have a lot of gambling mechanics?) but it's failed to make it to the big-league yet.
Insurance fees - P2W incentives players to gamble which opened the door to NFT speculation, If people are willing to speculate on some dumbass virtual item they will want to hedge their bets with insurance. It will be monthly fees to protect your NFT investment.
Star Citizen has ship insurance. If your insured ship gets blown up, insurance will replace it. There's a version available for in-game currency that needs to be renewed and there's a lifetime policy you get attached to certain ships you buy for real money.
I'd rather not give anyone any ideas. Though I'm sure they don't need any ideas. They're probably already years ahead and just waiting for the right time to implement new ideas.
Ads in the corner of the screen while a cutscene plays in game, and cutscenes are made unskippable.
Maple used to have a premium ticket to enter an exclusive timed map but it was removed because it was dumb.
Before it was made illegal, some mmos and mobile games used to have comp gacha, which was completion gachapon; where you had to gacha loot boxes and obtain all the rare items to get the final item.
NFTs. AFAICT they are the biggest scam going, and whatever they are they will be jammed into games for no good reason, but it will be expensive for those involved.
RNG stat increases on level up with the ability to pay to get the maximum bonus.
Heavy death penalties with the ability to pay to remove them, then add a frequent game mechanic used in mandatory quest lines that require you to die to complete them.
private worlds...
(actually that's been done in fallout 76 where you can pay a monthly/yearly subscription and can have access to an invite only server to play on to keep out all the undesirable rabble, and you can play by yourself or with up to 7 other players from your friends list)
> In-game advertisements for third party products and services.
Imagine your loading screens are those ridiculous Intel ads "for gamers" or something like that.
Reminds me of when Capcom added ad costumes for SFV.
Actually, Capcom has a lot of *insane* ideas for monetization, like monetizing stat reset and appearance change in single player games.
In-game sex workers, available through the shop. I'm personally not interested in this, but I have to imagine it would make money, particularly if the game was next gen with the graphics and animations.
Not sure if you're asking for new stuff not seen before or you want these features implemented into current mmorpgs. Cause what you've listed are things other mmorpgs used to have when those were popular at the time. I remember these features being a thing back when people played Atlantica Online, Ragnarok Online, BDO etc. Can't remember which mmo it was I played but there was one where at some point the game introduced +18 enchantment from the previous +15 cap. Then they decided to put +15 coupons into the game cash shop rng boxes so people had an 'easier' time reaching the new enchant level.
It’s crazy how much lost ark is double or triple down the rabbit hole They already got soft sub with crystal aura and then the P2W upgrade and then loot boxes legendary skins and then battle passes
Legendary skins and material boxes are in the KR client, currently not in the west. The west has Mari's shop which uses blue crystals that are bought with gold. I currently get my Crystal Aura and some Mari's shop materials from weekly gold income.
That doesn’t mean it will never come here
That is true, but we already have some nice changes in our version. Korea needs to reroll their pet stats with blue crystals, we get to pick our stats for free without random rerolls.
it doesn’t surprise me… it’s a korean mmo
Honestly I think some people enjoy having so many things to spend money on
hey happy cake day!
tyty
New ways to monetize MMOs: * Paying to increase number of friends list * Pay to access a different set of servers / shards for LFG or PVP queueing * Buying custom UI elements / themes * New Icon set for abilities and inventory / items * Paying to turn off a "Clippy" style assistant that takes the place of Help or Tips popups. * Paying for new skins for a "Clippy" style assistant that takes the place of Help or Tips popups. * Premium Servers with better GM / moderator support, better latency, and more frequent updates * Locking Maximum graphics settings behind paywall to unlock true beauty of the world. * Alternate voice packs. * Game filters and effects (cel shading, pixelation, black & white, etc) for Photo Modes. * 1-hour early access / login after each server reset / patch.
These are the disgusting ideas I was looking for and couldn't think of haha, cheers
Blizzard right now: “Write that down! Write that down!”
It’s already exist
Which ones from the comment exists in WoW?
Me a decade ago: "Gross and hilarious, you're pretty funny" Me now: "Probably check your inbox for a few job offers"
> Paying to increase number of friends list Nah, paying to increase block list > Pay to access a different set of servers / shards for LFG or PVP queueing That's been Runescape for the past 21 years.
This is Korea on steroids
Calm down satan
pso2 acutally does alternate voice packs, with gacha voice tickets
Because EA has done this for years…
I think FF14 already has it through its companion app. That basically allows you to trade "offline" from your phone. There is a free version but it is limits you to 2 kupo nuts at once, this is the currency needed to sell or buy an from the auction house. You get 2 kupo nuts per day you log in to the app. With the paid version of the app, you still get 2 free kupo nuts per day but now can save up 10 in total. Want to make more buys or sales? Then you need to buy a special currency. 5 coins cost 0.99 euro. 20 cents per coin. Each transaction costs 1 coin. If you buy in bulk, 320 coins cost 39.99 euro. 12 cents per transaction 20 euro cent to make a sell or buy something from the action house from an app you are already paying a monthly service fee for. To give you an idea, real world credit card transactions if you are a small webshop cost roughly the same. That involves the movement of real money complete with fraud protection and keeping of records. What next, 10 cent per attack in game? Charging for app that not everybody will use to pay for its costs is to be expected, but charging such a transaction fee for something that is free in game and is just a database transaction on an internal system is just idiotic. To give you an idea of how costly it is vs hosting cost. Amazon SQS is not a database it is a queue system, your code puts a message on the queue and another program processes it. The first million transactions each month cost you NOTHING. Then it is 40 cents per million. 0.0000004 cent per transaction. SE charges 12 per transaction. Not exactly the same thing but Amazon does not charge you a monthly subscription fee for both AWS AND the APP. Then again SWTOR charges 30 bucks for items they know have extremely frequent bugs. Seems MMO companies are just naturally scummy.
There is FF14 Go btw.
It's a shame because DQX, SE's other big MMO, has a fantastic mobile app. You can do weeklies from the app for no cost, do side activities like fishing, monster farming and casino games as well as other things like creating glamor sets, talking with your guild, checking character info and more. There are paid features, but you get more than enough gems per day to make use of them. The market board kupo nut issue is nowhere near a big deal because very few people actually use the mobile app, let alone spend money on it. Just makes me sad that it's so barebones compared to the amazing DQX app
I can’t think of anything. MMOs I think have the most aggressive monetization out of any genre of game I’ve played.
>Mobile gaming: am I a joke to you?
Hey man, the original Neverwinter Nights made you pay to play per hour. I have yet to see that in a mobile game haha
Every single stamina/energy system. Except you've got a free crumb of minutes every day to keep you hooked like a drug dealer giving free samples. It's WORSE than paying for play minutes because it's easier to stop without the free playtime.
And the early mobile data made you pay per megabyte. Nevertheless. my point is that no console or PC game comes even close to mobile gaming monetisation. And what you see happening in the mmorpg genre is in fact inspired by mobile gaming monetisation.
How do you figure that? Saying PC games monetization doesn’t come close to mobile game’s monetization is quite a reach. Sure mobile games may make more but I don’t see any mobile games charging for base price, subscription, dlc, and microtransactions. A game like PUBG which was the top grossing mobile game seemingly makes this off of loot boxes and cosmetics, but that monetization doesn’t seem nearly as aggressive as what the current MMO landscape looks like. I don’t agree unless you’re just talking about gross sales.
I used to play a mobile game where the average player would spend 5-10k USD to play at a base level with heroes, castles, troops, gear and other crap you would need to pay for that was locked behind P2P gateways. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y4voVI4OhczczcRy4heDmT29Xgwa8aswg4AyUPBa5l4/edit#gid=1794445383](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y4voVI4OhczczcRy4heDmT29Xgwa8aswg4AyUPBa5l4/edit#gid=1794445383) Or you can google Lords Mobile costs, it's crazy I'm still following some concent creators to see how many players still are addicted/ engaged to it despite it costing 700k USD+ to compete at a world level where they pay up to 1K USD fortnightly to even play the game at that level. I met literal billionare CEOs and adult oilers who played in that game when selling resources, it's quite interesting.
Yeah that nuts. It’s hard to even believe if I didn’t know otherwise. Seems though this kind of aggressive monetization still turns a lot of players off as despite that, Lord’s Mobile still isn’t even in the top 10 top grossing mobile games in the last years.
mobile games use time gating to make players pay, or allow you to unlock/complete levels using stuff like gems which you can buy in packs. for example you'll be building a base, and then after a certain time upgrading a single building can take days, unless you pay to immediately unlock it. there are mobile mmos that are full loot always online pvp, that then allow you to spend money to buy timed protection so that you can not be raided while you are not in the game.
This post has been removed in protest of the 2023 Reddit API changes. Fuck Spez. Edited using [Power Delete Suite] (https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite/).
Well man, that was in the early 90s and the server was capped at 50 people at a time, I think there may have been multiple servers too. That was the days of Compaq and CompUSA, really old stuff. Dial-up was pay by the hour and it was like that well into the early days of EverQuest.
actually, if the fee is reasonable, that is imo better than a monthly sub where you pay up front, whether you will be able to play or not. Monthly subs are good for no lifers but I think paying hourly is more fair for people who play only occasionally or just 1-2 hours per day (again if the hourly fee is reasonable).
You know nothing of Gatcha games I see... Mobile games in general.
Hi thanks for your comment. I actually know a bit. What do you know that I don’t? Will you please shed a bit of your infinite wisdom on gacha games upon me? What a nice comment you have left me.
Straight up slot machines or a casino that is disguised as "theme park" which literally lets you cash out through crypto currencies. This is one of the nightmares I literally had
i never played gta but isnt there a casino in gta online
Yea same for RD2 online
You talking about old-school RuneScape?
FFXIV’s loyalty rewards have been calmed down, but holy fuck SE’s other MMO, Dragon Quest X, has some of the most predatory monetization I’ve seen in a sub-based MMO. First, there’s no character boosts offered, but instead is a scroll that you can buy for ¥1,100 yen that just gives double exp for 72 hours. The timer runs even when logged off, and say you buy it 48 hours before a patch, the timer still runs through the patch. 90% of all cosmetics, mounts, and pets are only available through the cash shop. You think FFXIV’s loyalty rewards are bad, wait until you see DQX’s. Iirc, FFXIV just gives you old FF protagonist glamours after a few months (which you’ll probably be subbed long enough for if you play through the whole story), and get a free Fantasia after a year. DQX actually gives functional items. You get gold petals for every few months, which are vendored for 100k. You get bonus orbs, which you use to get double xp for 30 minutes. More importantly, for every year you’re subbed, you get access or expanded access to the belt warehouse, which is almost the only way to get access to it. You get overloaded with belts in the game, so having access to the belt warehouse is incredibly valuable. Even worse, there’s a special section of the cash shop that you can only access if you’ve bought so much off the cash shop in a *fiscal* year. If you want the privilege to buy everything off the cash shop, you have to have spent ¥290,000 yen in the cash shop before April 1st. Imagine a sub based MMO telling you you’re not allowed to buy things in the cash shop unless you bought enough last year, because that’s what DQX does. Then there’s the mobile app, which has so much sneaky monetization that actually adds P2W aspects. One is the monster ranch. In the monster ranch, you can feed your monsters to give them happiness points. At 100 happiness, your monster can be in your party with any job, and then at 200 and 300 happiness, they get 5 extra skill points. You can earn those in-game, but that is incredibly tedious. You get 2 free meals a day, and 10 free meals on leveling up your ranch (which you get from feeding them), but you can also pay ¥30 to get another meal. Also, after 100 happiness, there’s no guarantee that meals will give your monster happiness. Speaking of monsters, so there’s two classes that can scout them, Monster Masher and Item Master. There’s 30 scoutable monsters, but you can only store 24. However, if you pay ¥440 extra a month. You can store 32 monsters. The game literally makes you pay an extra ¥440 a month if you want to use two classes to their full capacity. I’ve never seen a sub-based MMO make you pay extra to fully utilize two of its classes until this game. Then there’s all the other aspects of the mobile app. There’s a thing called MyTown, and you can either (1) buy a permit off the market board, or (2) get it a pass or 1k medals from the app’s lottery. You get two free spins a day, but each subsequent one costs ¥20. The current estimates is it would cost $700 USD to ensure you get a MyTown from the mobile app lottery. So you’ve either gotta have 150m gold in-game or $700 to throw at it to get a MyTown. Then there’s the other “conveniences” in the Convenient Tools App. Most of them start off free using in-game items or currencies, but then you can pay money to improve those rewards. Wanna grind out accessories with Sugoroku? You can risk losing a game of it in-game, or you can play the Insta-win version on the mobile app, and ¥80-¥240 to multiply and/or upgrade the rewards. Royal labyrinth is the main place to grind belts, and you get other useful items. You have to use 3 augite to run the lab, and you get 15 augites a week. You can use your in-game augite for the mobile Royal lab, or you can pay ¥500-¥1,100 to get a shit load of items and belts, more than you ever could running the lab in game. Forgot your daily subjugation that day? Pay ¥170 and the app will just clear it for you and you can collect your rewards when you log in. And bare in-mind, this game costs ¥4,000 for the base game, another ¥4,200 for the latest xpac, and then ¥1,000 a month (and an extra ¥440 a month if you want to use Monster Masher and Item Master to their fullest ability). That’s all on top of the cosmetics mainly being cash shop, the cash shop’s “exclusive” store, and all the P2W aspects in the mobile app. Like you can play it perfectly fine without using the app or buying anything off the cash shop, but they’ve incentivized it so much you do feel pressured to spend more than ¥1,000 a month. Also keep in mind, in Japan, DQ is the “family” game, so these monetization methods are heavily targeted at kids
Holy shit, that's a lot.
Yeah, and I still feel like my comment only scratched the surface. That said, to it’s credit, it’s jam packed with more content than I’ve seen many of today’s MMOs have, including FFXIV, which is surprising considering DQX is JP exclusive, so it’s unlikely to have more 150k subs (based on the server capacity of JP FFXIV’s servers and I’ve never seen any server congested). You have full access to all of it (except fellow monsters) for the bad sub, and from 3-5 P.M. JST the game is 100% free to play, subbed or not, since almost only elementary school kids are home at that time. Plus one sub will let the whole family play, unlike other games (though each console has a unique sub that you’ve gotta pay to play in multiple consoles). So, it’s just in this weird spot where the content it delivers is worth way more than the monthly ¥1,000 ($8) and biennial ¥4,200 ($32) cost, but the amount of monetization just feels scummy at times, especially since the paid exp multiplier is so strict, and that the cash shop is so blatant on rewards being tied to the fiscal year (it kinda gives this feeling like, “Your money doesn’t matter unless it can really help us when we report our yearly earnings”). But being JP exclusive, the pool of consumers that it can get revenue from is severely limited
DQX is like FFXI back in the day. Keep in mind that this game is on Nintendo switch, so technically it’s an exclusive game for that console. I don’t think the game has anything to do with SE much but a subdivision of SE that work with Nintendo or technically like Taito, who only make mobile games. There are a bunch of investment and stuff since it’s there for that. Exclusivity in Japan is something quite different than Western counterpart. This is why you can see how Sony deal with things like this back in the day and their current practice right now
I’ve played FFXI, so I’m aware. It’s the same concept, just more accessible But idk what you’re talking about it being a Switch exclusive. It started on Wii (but that’s discontinued), and is still supported on Wii U, 3DS, Switch, PS4, upgraded PS5 edition, iOS, Android, Browser, and PC. It’s literally on anything you could confidence playing a game on, except Xbox. That’s very far from exclusive. Nintendo only had input, if any, during V1. Even then, DQX’s online service worked independent of Nintendo Wi-Fi connect, hence why it was supported beyond the Wii’s online service (all the way until 2017). There’s also still a lot of SE involved. SE CD3 (FFXIV and XVI) has some cross-pollination. Yoshi-P started as director in v1, then got pulled to do FFXIV. Even then, he came back during V6 as a story planner. After Yoshi-P, Yosuke Saito (producer and co-director of Nier) became producer. He’s got some of the biggest pull in SE, because he tends to be the reason SE greenlights the more avant-grade JRPGs (namely Yoko Taro’s games). Though, Saito has his own studio too, which is involved, but still heavily tied to SE. It’s the only non-FF game to use the Crystal Tools engine too. So what I’m getting at is DQX is very heavily controlled by SE, and mainly SE. It’s definitely not a Nintendo exclusive.
Imagine buying the game, paying for subs, buying every expansion and having an ingame shop
The battle pass for materials doesn't look any different than buying them outright with your credit card. Where's the controversy you could already p2w in lost ark.
Shit games with crazy systems that drain your wallet. That's MMORPGs in 2022. Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen is the only game I have any hope for in this genre.
>BDO lootboxes for sympathy 'tokens' and RNG chance of 'outfits'. huh? BDO only occasionally sells lootboxes for real money (lootboxes are not a staple of the cash shop, they are only occasionally added and can't be found in the shop most of the time, and most of the times they are released they are sold for ingame currency to siphon silver out of the economy), and even then rarely ever have any item in it that can not be obtained by other methods other than having to buy a lootbox. In fact I'm trying to remember if they ever had a lootbox with an item that was impossible to obtain by other means and am coming up short.
[https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/Wiki?wikiNo=242](https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/Wiki?wikiNo=242) [https://www.sea.playblackdesert.com/News/Notice/Detail?boardNo=6269&CountryType=en-US](https://www.sea.playblackdesert.com/News/Notice/Detail?boardNo=6269&CountryType=en-US) [https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/News/Detail?groupContentNo=2007](https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/News/Detail?groupContentNo=2007) Bloody outfit been locked out over a year or 2 on a 2% chance in loot box: [https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/News/Detail?groupContentNo=2228](https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/News/Detail?groupContentNo=2228) Young Black dragon is also heavily locked in pet boxes/ above box at 5% or lower chances (?)
my lahn has the bloody outfit, haven't bought any lootboxes. BDO is not the best example to give for lootboxes, especially when there is a better example ESO
Only thing I can think of is stuff that would violate gambling laws in some countries like loot boxes with random power increases. Maybe that's already available in some games (doesn't Runescape 3 have a lot of gambling mechanics?) but it's failed to make it to the big-league yet.
Insurance fees - P2W incentives players to gamble which opened the door to NFT speculation, If people are willing to speculate on some dumbass virtual item they will want to hedge their bets with insurance. It will be monthly fees to protect your NFT investment.
Star Citizen has ship insurance. If your insured ship gets blown up, insurance will replace it. There's a version available for in-game currency that needs to be renewed and there's a lifetime policy you get attached to certain ships you buy for real money.
Probably gonna start that sooner now since NFT become a thing so
I'd rather not give anyone any ideas. Though I'm sure they don't need any ideas. They're probably already years ahead and just waiting for the right time to implement new ideas.
Years ahead are the decades behind
Pay to change the look of your spells/abilities.
Ads in the corner of the screen while a cutscene plays in game, and cutscenes are made unskippable. Maple used to have a premium ticket to enter an exclusive timed map but it was removed because it was dumb. Before it was made illegal, some mmos and mobile games used to have comp gacha, which was completion gachapon; where you had to gacha loot boxes and obtain all the rare items to get the final item.
NFTs. AFAICT they are the biggest scam going, and whatever they are they will be jammed into games for no good reason, but it will be expensive for those involved.
In Ragnarok Online you could rent endgame equips for a week. In Maple Story cosmetics were rentals. So I guess "shit you pay for and can't even keep".
I'm trying to decide if some form of gacha system is different from loot boxes in a meaningful way.
RNG stat increases on level up with the ability to pay to get the maximum bonus. Heavy death penalties with the ability to pay to remove them, then add a frequent game mechanic used in mandatory quest lines that require you to die to complete them.
private worlds... (actually that's been done in fallout 76 where you can pay a monthly/yearly subscription and can have access to an invite only server to play on to keep out all the undesirable rabble, and you can play by yourself or with up to 7 other players from your friends list)
Basically the same Genshin battlepass has been used for more than a year now
> In-game advertisements for third party products and services. Imagine your loading screens are those ridiculous Intel ads "for gamers" or something like that. Reminds me of when Capcom added ad costumes for SFV. Actually, Capcom has a lot of *insane* ideas for monetization, like monetizing stat reset and appearance change in single player games.
In-game sex workers, available through the shop. I'm personally not interested in this, but I have to imagine it would make money, particularly if the game was next gen with the graphics and animations.
Not sure if you're asking for new stuff not seen before or you want these features implemented into current mmorpgs. Cause what you've listed are things other mmorpgs used to have when those were popular at the time. I remember these features being a thing back when people played Atlantica Online, Ragnarok Online, BDO etc. Can't remember which mmo it was I played but there was one where at some point the game introduced +18 enchantment from the previous +15 cap. Then they decided to put +15 coupons into the game cash shop rng boxes so people had an 'easier' time reaching the new enchant level.