I'll start off by saying that I've never played the original Mortal Online...or even heard of it, for that matter.
With that out of the way, and correct me if I'm wrong here but, what in the world are you thinking by making this a subscription-based monetization system in today's gaming culture? Bethesda couldn't even make that succeed with the Elder Scrolls Online, an overwhelmingly popular intellectual property...though the reasons for this were multifaceted. You're crippling your playerbase, and likely your profits, by making this a subscription-required game...especially for a game like this, which has plenty of revenue potential with optional cosmetics. That's taking aside the hardships of the pandemic that have vastly strained people's wallets.
Planetside 2 cast aside the subscription model of their predecessor and went entirely free-to-play. Despite their horrendous launch and perpetual complications, it still manages to pull in enough revenue to justify continued updates of a fairly significant scale nine years later. They should have had an initial purchasing cost, as it would have deterred cheating and gave them a financial buffer from the fudged launch, but that's another matter entirely. Either way, they're free to play and their monetization revolves around mostly cosmetics.
Warframe is another game that does exceptionally well through the sale of cosmetics.
ESO managed to salvage themselves by dropping the subscription requirement, though they went in an entirely different predatory direction through the perpetual sale of expansions...which is frustrating, but it can't be argued that it didn't work. There's likely a fair way to do this if they were to adopt something akin to Warframe's economy, where players can sell in-game items to other players for currency that can then be used to buy what would usually require actual cash. I'd farm in ESO to buy an expansion, without hesitation...and there would still be those who couldn't invest the time and, instead, chose to buy the cash-related currency to then trade for what I've harvested. All you have to do is get the scarcity levels right and a healthy economy established.
I truly believe the team should seriously reconsider how they're going to monetize this. You could easily do this cosmetically and have an initial purchasing price of $60 or so...with a cash-shop that provides items like, for example, a darker sort of mossy cobblestone to build with, fancy horse armor, fancy mount colors, unique furniture options, tattoos, piercings, hair styles, weapon styles, armor styles, the works.
So long as this is paired with an equally robust customization systems separate from the cash-only cosmetic shop, it's entirely fair and doesn't leave people with the impression that they're missing out if they're not paying in. I'm not going to care about the fact that I can't get a cool piercing in the cash-shop if I can get something neat in the base customization system... Alternatively, I'd care even less if I could farm materials in-game to trade for the currency that allows me to then buy this item from the cash-shop...because you can bet your backside that I'd be out there farming these materials to trade with someone who didn't have the time to invest, but wanted god knows how many stacks of whatever resource was a bit difficult to get without the time investment.
This sort of thing can work...
Initial Purchasing cost of $60 or so (Both to deter cheating and as a nice financial foundation) alongside a purely cosmetic cash-shop with an in-game economy that allows players to farm for those who don't have the time but have the money to purchase some special form of currency for cash-related cosmetics. You could even do what many games are doing by commissioning the work out. Had Planetside 2 launched right alongside the Player Studio, they would have been monumentally better off...and Warframe's creator-driven content certainly sells well. Individuals have made a career off this new trend and they've been itching to do fantasy work alongside the much more common Science Fiction work they already do. This reduces your costs in creating content and allows the team to focus more on foundational features and advancements in the overall game itself.
Don't make a subscription mandatory in today's gaming climate....this is certainly just my opinion, but I strongly feel it's a massive mistake. It's also one that's hard to come back from when the most hype for a new game is at launch.
Regardless, game looks awesome. The customization of weapons is...well, amazing and ripe for even more monetization in the aforementioned rant.
With that out of the way, and correct me if I'm wrong here but, what in the world are you thinking by making this a subscription-based monetization system in today's gaming culture? Bethesda couldn't even make that succeed with the Elder Scrolls Online, an overwhelmingly popular intellectual property...though the reasons for this were multifaceted. You're crippling your playerbase, and likely your profits, by making this a subscription-required game...especially for a game like this, which has plenty of revenue potential with optional cosmetics. That's taking aside the hardships of the pandemic that have vastly strained people's wallets.
Planetside 2 cast aside the subscription model of their predecessor and went entirely free-to-play. Despite their horrendous launch and perpetual complications, it still manages to pull in enough revenue to justify continued updates of a fairly significant scale nine years later. They should have had an initial purchasing cost, as it would have deterred cheating and gave them a financial buffer from the fudged launch, but that's another matter entirely. Either way, they're free to play and their monetization revolves around mostly cosmetics.
Warframe is another game that does exceptionally well through the sale of cosmetics.
ESO managed to salvage themselves by dropping the subscription requirement, though they went in an entirely different predatory direction through the perpetual sale of expansions...which is frustrating, but it can't be argued that it didn't work. There's likely a fair way to do this if they were to adopt something akin to Warframe's economy, where players can sell in-game items to other players for currency that can then be used to buy what would usually require actual cash. I'd farm in ESO to buy an expansion, without hesitation...and there would still be those who couldn't invest the time and, instead, chose to buy the cash-related currency to then trade for what I've harvested. All you have to do is get the scarcity levels right and a healthy economy established.
I truly believe the team should seriously reconsider how they're going to monetize this. You could easily do this cosmetically and have an initial purchasing price of $60 or so...with a cash-shop that provides items like, for example, a darker sort of mossy cobblestone to build with, fancy horse armor, fancy mount colors, unique furniture options, tattoos, piercings, hair styles, weapon styles, armor styles, the works.
So long as this is paired with an equally robust customization systems separate from the cash-only cosmetic shop, it's entirely fair and doesn't leave people with the impression that they're missing out if they're not paying in. I'm not going to care about the fact that I can't get a cool piercing in the cash-shop if I can get something neat in the base customization system... Alternatively, I'd care even less if I could farm materials in-game to trade for the currency that allows me to then buy this item from the cash-shop...because you can bet your backside that I'd be out there farming these materials to trade with someone who didn't have the time to invest, but wanted god knows how many stacks of whatever resource was a bit difficult to get without the time investment.
This sort of thing can work...
Initial Purchasing cost of $60 or so (Both to deter cheating and as a nice financial foundation) alongside a purely cosmetic cash-shop with an in-game economy that allows players to farm for those who don't have the time but have the money to purchase some special form of currency for cash-related cosmetics. You could even do what many games are doing by commissioning the work out. Had Planetside 2 launched right alongside the Player Studio, they would have been monumentally better off...and Warframe's creator-driven content certainly sells well. Individuals have made a career off this new trend and they've been itching to do fantasy work alongside the much more common Science Fiction work they already do. This reduces your costs in creating content and allows the team to focus more on foundational features and advancements in the overall game itself.
Don't make a subscription mandatory in today's gaming climate....this is certainly just my opinion, but I strongly feel it's a massive mistake. It's also one that's hard to come back from when the most hype for a new game is at launch.
Regardless, game looks awesome. The customization of weapons is...well, amazing and ripe for even more monetization in the aforementioned rant.
