Orymus3: I think it depends on the game.
As a game as runescape I would like to spend now and then 5$ on a membership.
As a game a StarCraft 2: Wings of liberty I don't want to pay content in-game. So one purchase only for the full game.

Ah this brings a new question up for me. League of Legends if a free game. And you aren't forced to buy a single thing. How do the makers of LoL know that will work?
Paying a server costs allot! And certainly the hours making of it. How did they know they are going to get advantage of it? How do they get payed is not a single player would pay the extra content? Some friends of mine play LoL but they don't waste money on it.


Haps: never thought about that.
So it's smarter to balance the buying of content in-game and your game currency.
For example a newbie can't buy a single item with real money. You need to play for a while so you can unlock content you can pay with real money.
Because indeed, when you are a noob and you can buy 1.000.000 gold for real money for example, it's easy to buy the strongest weapons/armor then and own people that are playing for months. This brings hatred for the buying stuff. So when I balance the buying content with your game currency I can make a nice balanced game, I think.

Also yes, when the player is playing for 3 years for example he already have better skills and new unlocked items/things. So that is his reward. But I'm still thinking on putting a discount on the memberships as well. It makes people that only play for 2 years more motivated to play another year to get the discounts..

Thanks everyone for the answers/opinions! This makes everything more clearer. It's hard to find what's the best for the player and your business.


~EngineProgrammer

Orymus3: I think it depends on the game.

True enough, though free distribution, pay for additional content seems to be more successful even in games you would expect to use the traditional pay once model - TF2 immediately comes to mind, as Valve reported a 12 fold increase in profits.

Ah this brings a new question up for me. League of Legends[/quote]I buy skins in LoL just because I support the game, and to be honest I am extremely stingy when it comes to spending money on games. It's free and a lot of fun, and that makes me as a consumer want to support the product even despite my outright refusal to spend it elsewhere. As consequence, I'm willing to fork over what cash I have for games to Riot (the makers of League of Legends, for those that don't know). I believe LoL has one of the best models for competitive multi-player games - free to play, absolutely no pay-to-win, and pay-for-cosmetics. Riot has never once voiced concern over profitability and generally tends to reduce prices as time goes on, rather than keep them artificially high.

So it's smarter to balance the buying of content in-game and your game currency.
For example a newbie can't buy a single item with real money. You need to play for a while so you can unlock content you can pay with real money.
Because indeed, when you are a noob and you can buy 1.000.000 gold for real money for example, it's easy to buy the strongest weapons/armor then and own people that are playing for months. This brings hatred for the buying stuff. So when I balance the buying content with your game currency I can make a nice balanced game, I think.[/quote]If it's pay to win, you wont get a dime out of me and I will strongly encourage my friends to play a different game. If you can ever buy powerful items, the entire system becomes pay to win. Real world economic status having influence over the success of a virtual world character is what brings hatred for buying stuff. People do not like the sense of inequality that letting rich kids buy things for your game garners. I would say leave RMT (real money trading) to cosmetic and convenience items (extra character slots, extra bank space) and avoid all pay to win at all costs (items, xp boosts, ect).

Pay to win aside, if you're going to model RMT into your economy, you should definitely account for it or your game currency will become useless. It becomes very hard to regulate the inflow of items if players can and are motivated to buy them, and this destabilizes a game's economy by creating an item fountain. In a single player game who cares, but it sounds like you were describing mmo's, where a broken economy can kill the game. This is why games use soul or account binding of RMT items, to prevent these items from hitting the market. Trouble is, if all the good items are RMT, then what good is gold? And if the RMT items aren't the best, why would someone spend real money to get them?

You'd be much better off from a balance/fairness perspective to sell items that make attainable-through-playtime items look different. So the Level 1337 Sword of Pwnsauce can look like a scythe with a cool shader effect applied to it, rather than the generic 1337 sword. Much fairer, and still incentivizes RMT without damaging the economy.

Ah this brings a new question up for me. League of Legends if a free game. And you aren't forced to buy a single thing. How do the makers of LoL know that will work?
Paying a server costs allot! And certainly the hours making of it. How did they know they are going to get advantage of it? How do they get payed is not a single player would pay the extra content? Some friends of mine play LoL but they don't waste money on it.

Actually it all falls down to "is your game a good product".
I know there are some cases where great ideas just did not generate the sales and went bankrupt, but in general, the good product stands out from the masses if there is a reason to purchase. If you want to look at it this way, LoL is a free game with many DLCs. It is basically your shareware demo ala 90s, except you have a lot of stuff ready to be added. If your core gameplay is fun and your monetization options REALLY bring something to the table that alters the experience significantly, then you're in for a wild ride.
LoL's branding was made in a number of ways. There's a lot of self-expression in the champions you purchase, the skins you unlock, etc. And there's always the twist of having new skills.
Personally, I wouldn't have believe this system would've worked to that degree, but it most certainly couldn't fail based on the audience behind this type of game. When DoTA came out as a Warcraft III mod, there were already a significant amount of players interested in this genre, and let's face it, tug-of-war wasn't as widespread as say, tower defense. They just knew coming in they'd have users, and it was just a challenge of increase the conversion rate of paying users.