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Topic: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

DEV CALVIN wrote:

Dear Players,

we still have the launch discounts included in our pricing. With Terra Incognita, we feel another chapter has begun in Perpetuum. Therefore we are revising our pricing structure to the following:

30 day code: $9.95 / €8.95
90 day code: $26.95 / €23.95 (~11% discount)
180 day code: $49.95 / €44.95 (~16% discount)
360 day code: $94.95 / €84.95 (~21% discount)

These prices will go live on the 15th of May, 2011. If you would like to take advantage of the current discount structure you may do that until this date.

Personally, I think this is insane.  One of the best features of the game is the pricing, and considering that you pretty much have to run multiple accounts to be effective it makes sense that they be discounted.

I understand that they consider the doubling of the land mass etc to be a huge milestone, I admit that there has been more to the patch than what I originally thought and that generally it's been good.  I think calling it an expansion is wrong, there were no new faction races no new bots no new weapon types etc, just more of what was already there, which isn't bad just not a true expansion in my opinion.

However, when the population of active players isn't even 400 (and that's being generous) I don't see how you can justify price increases.   If the game had 4000 players up from less than 200 concurrently most of the time then I could see that because you'd be less likely to lose people.

With people on the fence about staying or people sticking around hoping things get better I think this will lose them and certainly it doesn't help for people looking at trying the game. 

While $10 isn't terrible for a single account, this game still has a long way to go towards being a AAA title like Lord of the Rings Online which also charges that much per month (unless you're an f2p cash shop ***). 

DISCLAIMER: This change doesn't even affect me directly (unless you count a further population drop) because I bought 3x 1-year subs for my 3 accounts 2 days ago.  I just think this is premature and a very bad idea.

What do you think?  I checked Eve's pricing here since the comparisons are frequently made.  But Eve comes with a *lot* more stuff from what I can tell and has a vastly larger player base in addition to being able to earn play time in game. 

I've never played Eve so can't speak to lag/connection/server stability but until they fix the huge latency issues with PO's servers I'd definitely hesitate at paying an extra $70 over what I just paid for 3 years worth.

2 Reply by Legedric Warstrike (edited by Legedric Warstrike 2011-05-10 15:25:00)

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

OLD
30 days - 8.95 EUR / 9.95 USD*
90 days - 21.95 EUR / 23.95 USD
180 days - 37.95 EUR / 41.95 USD
365 days - 64.95 EUR / 71.95 USD

NEW
30 day code: $9.95 / €8.95
90 day code: $26.95 / €23.95 (~11% discount)
180 day code: $49.95 / €44.95 (~16% discount)
360 day code: $94.95 / €84.95 (~21% discount)

My 2 NIC cents:
As I paid for the next 6 months for my 2 accounts I mainly compare this pricing option and I agree to Crepitus, saying that a ~20% increase is no way justified! For a one year sub it is even > 30%, keeping in mind that they raise the price by 20 € and reduced the playtime by 5 days to 360 days.

In addition, I also agree not to call this patch an expension. If I would be evil minded I would not even call Perpetuum a game in terms of a real MMO (sandbox or not...) as there is not even a single "long term motivation" and there are still at least 6 months of work to do until some major features will be able to "complete" the gameplay of Perpetuum.

But I guess we may talk/discuss this topic but I doubt the DEVs will change the pricing back, honestly I think it is more likely they will increase the prices next time they give us artillery, making it the next "expansion"... Ok I may exaggerate a bit, but this pricing increase (and the so called justification for it) made me disappointed.

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

hey, the DEV also have to life from something. In one topic you are demanding more advertising, better server and such things,
and on the other side your whining about a price-increase which of 2€ for the 90day subscription (thats a little bit more then 1L Gasoline)

considering how much i had to pay at the gas-station the last few weeks, this few bucks increase is nothing!.

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

so I'm paying them an extra dollar a month, when they write solid code, and give us a working product compared to other "sandboxes" out there.

Yeah they can have an extra buck, lol

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

I agree with Annih, but I understand why there is also some push-back from the pricing change.

The amounts of money we are talking about in the over-all scheme of things is small, but the concept of evaluating a game's "actual value" to the "cost to play" is used all the time. And with all the MMO choices out there, all of which are reasonably good, the differentiator can often come down to price.

What I would like to point out is ....

News wrote:

2011-04-29 02:00:00
Terra Incognita expansion coming on 2011-05-04

We're proud to announce that the very first expansion of Perpetuum called Terra Incognita will be released free of charge to all our subscribers and trial players on 2011-05-04.

I think the agressive discounted pricing from the launch probably does need to be adjusted and really $24 a year more is trivial, but the timing is poorly executed.

The only spin on this, is that your hoping players will stock up now before the increase, to give you a financial boost to move the server to London; so I'll buy a couple subs and hope that is the plan.

6 Reply by Alexander (edited by Alexander 2011-05-10 20:28:40)

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

To Devs:
If this is to get enough money to move the server then just say that with X numbers of months purchased you could move the server and see what happens. If you also need to decrease the discount percentages (And the discount is still pretty good for those who buy in bulk) then say what it is in aid of (Other than staying alive of course.. Which is sub-important)

To Players:
Take a look below and see that you're still SAVING money when buying in bulk. When you buy anything you pay the price at the time of purchase. Sometimes this is great for when investing during price increases, say in the housing market. And other times it sucks like when you buy a new TV and a week later the store has a 20% discount day. Anyone 'Outraged' should probably rethink their statement.

Cost (Saving vs buying 30 days at a time / Saving per month)
Old:
30 days - $9.95
90 days -  $23.95 ($6 / $2 PM)
180 days - $41.95 ($17.75 / $2.95 PM)
365 days - $71.95 ($49.10 / $4.03 PM)

New:
30 day code: $9.95
90 day code: $26.95 ($2.90 / $0.96 PM)
180 day code: $49.95 ($9.75 / $1.625 PM)
360 day code: $94.95 ($24.45 / $2.0375 PM)

If anyone has an issue with the above then they don't have to worry about anything because  they don't have enough money to eat and will die before a yearly subscription runs out YAY!

The end.

The Game

7 Reply by Kynes (edited by Kynes 2011-05-10 19:30:24)

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

I thought the expansion was "free"?  LOL

At least the 30 day is staying the same.. One of the things I mention to people about this game is how it is cheaper than the standard MMO price of $14.95/month.  Please don't rasie the rates to that pricing.

8 Reply by Campana (edited by Campana 2011-05-10 20:34:24)

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

The increase for the 360 days sub is an extra 5 pence per day. And also since I already bought 365 day subs I don't really care. Next year I probably won't even remember this ever happened.

Edit: but reading the other posts, yeah, they shouldn't advertise an expansion as free if they put subs up on the basis of it...even if the cost is negligible.

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

Of course the DEVs need money to keep things up and running, that's (at least for me) not the bad thing about this price increase.

If they would have justified this increase by saying "Guys, to be honest we need some extra money the upcoming months to keep our own plans etc." I wouldn't care at all as I already paid both accounts until november...

But they say that they increase the prices as Perpetuum is reaching a new chapter with the release of this "expansion"... and keeping in mind that they advertised it as a free of charge game expansion it just sounds like pushing a reason in front to make us feel comfortable with it.

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

In general I think MMOs are very under-priced, especially the ones targeting more adult audiences. So whilst I have nothing against the increase myself, I hope it will not deter any people from subbing!

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

We intended the launch sale to be a much shorter period, we just never got around to changing it. It has nothing to do with the expansion. Some games charge a one time fee for the expansion packs, hence ours is free.

We also lowered the base prices and set new discount rates. We don't intend to keep changing the price structure, these prices will be in effect at least until the end of the year. This will be announced officially on the 15th of May.

Have no doubts, any extra revenue we get from this will be put to very good use for the benefit of Perpetuum. We don't drive Ferraris, we mostly don't even have cars.

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

DEV Calvin wrote:

We intended the launch sale to be a much shorter period, we just never got around to changing it. It has nothing to do with the expansion. Some games charge a one time fee for the expansion packs, hence ours is free.

We also lowered the base prices and set new discount rates. We don't intend to keep changing the price structure, these prices will be in effect at least until the end of the year. This will be announced officially on the 15th of May.

Have no doubts, any extra revenue we get from this will be put to very good use for the benefit of Perpetuum. We don't drive Ferraris, we mostly don't even have cars.

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

Annihilator wrote:

hey, the DEV also have to life from something. In one topic you are demanding more advertising, better server and such things,
and on the other side your whining about a price-increase which of 2€ for the 90day subscription (thats a little bit more then 1L Gasoline)

considering how much i had to pay at the gas-station the last few weeks, this few bucks increase is nothing!.

They should live with more people coming in due to better Trial and Newbie Experience.

You have to actually pay for one month to try the game out. Well 9 bucks for 6 weeks of playing is okay. But i still think its a barrier to many.

If we assume 600 Accounts which will pay up to 1€ more a month its 600€ more ... peanuts.

Not something that you should risk existing players for.

Loosing ~60 accounts, because people drop their 2nd or 3rd account due to the new prices will get you back to the current cashflow and only damages the game.

Why not aim to improve the game to get ~60 new accounts and make the cashflow out of that ? Improving the game experience for everyone with more players.

I would even go so far to say, that dropping the price even more (no way making it F2P!) would do the game good. Or offer a special Trial-Discount : 3€ for 4 weeks of unlimited gameplay...

Okay, the topic china farmers will rise up again with so luch prices. But my 2c on that : You have bigger things to worry about then china farmers AND its smth the GMs should take care of. Using mechanism that hurt the normal player too is like DRM.

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

Don't get the wrong impression from my post, I think the price change is appropriate, the timing was just wrong; but dev Calvin addressed that the intention was there earlier.

Perpetuum is definetly the type of game where a few $'s isn't going to pull players in or push them out of the game.

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

It definatly is when you have to pay for a real trial.

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

Caithleen wrote:

It definatly is when you have to pay for a real trial.

You do realize, that we did not change the 30 day subscription price.

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

I'm baffled by all the whiners. It was discounted before and now it isn't. End of story, quit crying. Prices are still fine. If you quit because it's now a couple bucks more and you can't afford that you have other issues. However I suspect most of you just want to rp being outraged roll

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

DEV Calvin wrote:
Caithleen wrote:

It definatly is when you have to pay for a real trial.

You do realize, that we did not change the 30 day subscription price.

More an addition to what i posted earlier. That the real trial(TM) could be cheaper ^^

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

Well if you don't like new pricing plans, you can pay now for two years in advance or so, might be a good investment smile

20 Reply by MoBIoS (edited by MoBIoS 2011-05-11 16:40:39)

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

I think the pricing is totally ok. Actually, I would even pay more for the game.  Before I give my good earned money, to some stupid EA Studios or whatever, who resurrect and break down any good old game title, down to PG6 and console and castrating them from any depth which they might have had in the past, just to get them as mainstream as possible. Taking the piss out of the fans, which used to like games such as Battlefield 1945, and many more.


I like supporting my Independent games, in every way. It´s hard enough, to stick it to the man. To compete on the market, against all those aggressive mainstream titles.

Now if I can contribute with my payment, to a financial stability and to meet forecasts for investments, such as cost of development, server infrastructure, promotion, etc…, I am only too happy to do so.

If you could calculate the income of like say 400 subscriptions for a monthly fee of 8€, you will receive only just about 3200€ a month. (not sure how many active subs of inactive players we would have). Now you going to have to pay your server cluster upkeep, pay yourself and others wages, tax, license fees, crack ***´s,  etc…you’re not even left with a little financial overhead to plan ahead with.

I have updated my two accounts, with yet another year’s subscription each. I know not everyone can afford this. But as I can, I am happy to give them some financial stability to plan ahead. Before the game will just cease to exist, only because the upkeep wasn´t affordable anymore. I like this game, not every day, but it has potential.

Looking at (st)eve, when it first started, they were in serious financial problems. They were almost bankrupt, but the state of island jumped in and provided subventions, to keep them going. I am not sure if Hungary would provide any of this. 

So imo, there is no reason to get upset about. Sure the interpretation of the extension release and the raise of the subscription discounts are misleading. But the subscription price has not been raised; it was the discount, which was reduced. 

Walk Save,

MoBIoS

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

I think the price change was just bad timing.. but I'm fine with it, I just hope they always keep the 30-day @ $9.95.  This is a big selling point IMHO.

As far as losing people, I think some people will get pissy and leave.. but not me.. in fact I just bought a second account yesterday with 6 months of time and I bnought another 6 months of time for my first account!  Gotta take advantage while the prices are cheap!

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

MoBIoS wrote:

I think the pricing is totally ok. Actually, I would even pay more for the game.  Before I give my good earned money, to some stupid EA Studios or whatever, who resurrect and break down any good old game title, down to PG6 and console and castrating them from any depth which they might have had in the past, just to get them as mainstream as possible. Taking the piss out of the fans, which used to like games such as Battlefield 1945, and many more.

I'm going to do this paragraph by paragraph because this whole post is hilarious to me and I'm bored at work right now.

I agree that the big studios suck, EA is among the worst for sure.  I think the BF you're referring to is this one, actually, and I loved that game; BF3 looks good too tbh, but I digress.  Many of the big studios just sell console ports of watered down games based on a franchise name.  But these aren't MMOs..

MOBIOS wrote:

I like supporting my Independent games, in every way. It´s hard enough, to stick it to the man. To compete on the market, against all those aggressive mainstream titles.

No doubt, I own quite a few Indie titles myself in all genres.  I actively look for new ones, particularly things like the humble bundle and steam sales.

MOBIOS wrote:

Now if I can contribute with my payment, to a financial stability and to meet forecasts for investments, such as cost of development, server infrastructure, promotion, etc…, I am only too happy to do so.

This is where it starts to get funny.   Are you asking for a DONATE button?  Because you directly contradict yourself below.

MOBIOS wrote:

If you could calculate the income of like say 400 subscriptions for a monthly fee of 8€, you will receive only just about 3200€ a month. (not sure how many active subs of inactive players we would have). Now you going to have to pay your server cluster upkeep, pay yourself and others wages, tax, license fees, crack hoe’s,  etc…you’re not even left with a little financial overhead to plan ahead with.

I agree, they could use investors, a cash influx from my aforementioned life time sub sale or other things.  It's pretty clear they're looking at the former, with them having an active long standing plea for publisher.

However, I don't think they're paying anywhere near the upkeep you think they are, because they're located on Hungary and anyone who has experienced hours of rubberbanding and disconnects can tell you their not paying for a top quality upstream.  Venturing a guess, I'd say they don't pay for flex bandwidth nor QoS priority so probably a lot of the problems come from provider throttling.

MOBIOS wrote:

I have updated my two accounts, with yet another year’s subscription each. I know not everyone can afford this. But as I can, I am happy to give them some financial stability to plan ahead. Before the game will just cease to exist, only because the upkeep wasn´t affordable anymore. I like this game, not every day, but it has potential.

This is where you completely lose me with your hypocrisy.  You just posted a bunch of glowing *** about how great it is to support Indie devs, how you don't mind paying more etc. ..... AND THEN you go and buy 2 more years of sub ***AT THE DISCOUNTED PRICES*** LLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

What? You couldn't wait til the 15th to pay more? Why not?

MOBIOS wrote:

Looking at (st)eve, when it first started, they were in serious financial problems. They were almost bankrupt, but the state of island jumped in and provided subventions, to keep them going. I am not sure if Hungary would provide any of this.

Why should the gov't subsidize a game?  I don't know anything about Eve history so this just sounds crazy to me *shrug*

MOBIOS wrote:

So imo, there is no reason to get upset about. Sure the interpretation of the extension release and the raise of the subscription discounts are misleading. But the subscription price has not been raised; it was the discount, which was reduced. 

Walk Save,

MoBIoS

Right.  Just extend your sub now so you don't have to pay it? Again, LULZ

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

Dear Crepitus,

I don´t know what you are trying to suggest, really.

But as far as I am interpreting your effort quoting me, in what you think are funny, contradictive and even hypocritical statements of mine, you are suggesting, that I contradict myself for not paying as much subscription fees as I can, for a game. 

Well let me tell you so much, that I actually do believe, that it is very much supportive, having bought 2 years subscriptions, in advance.

Now if your Mom would give you 2 years of your pocket money in advance, even if it´ll be 2 quid a month less, you´d know, that this would provide you with a certain financial stability for investment. At which point, if you invest it well enough, you will end up having maybe 10 quid a month more, than you would have had, which you could save, for when you are old enough to get yourself a pint down the pub.

And that’s exactly what I am doing. I can save myself some money each month, providing avatar creation some financial headroom for investment, while I can get drunk on the weekend, with the money I save on the discount.

Now I would call this a win win situation tongue

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

Edit: I took the liberty and cleaned up insults, trolls and spam. Keep it civil, gents.

Edit 2: Please do not discuss moderation on the forums. You may of course voice you complaint directly to us. - DEV Calvin

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Re: Thoughts on new pricing structure?

I was going to get a year subscription for my 2 accounts. I will wait a week and pay the higher price. The more money they have the more work and advertising can be done. The more work and advertising the more players we get. I compare the 20 dollars extra as the expense of one crappy movie my wife will make me see this year.