Which business model would you prefer?

I also come from a non-PoE focused background. I have played it, and even put some money and quite a few hours into in the past, but its’ been awhile. I typically prefer paying an upfront price for a game, but I actually love what PoE has done with their MTX / cosmetics. It’s not P2W, it’s pay to look pretty. But I don’t have to pay if I don’t want to and it doesn’t affect my gameplay in the slightest. (Stash tabs are a debate, of course).

Like many others appear to have expressed, ≈$15 with MTX / cosmetics as a sustained revenue source is fair. Too much less than $15 and you’ll have the psychological phenomenon where people associate the low price with low quality. That’s certainly not something you want. I would say $20 would be fair as well. The upfront price helps provide a safety net and some source of income so you can start on further development of future content and patches.

As long as the MTX are fair and don’t impact the actual gameplay, there shouldn’t be any problem with having them. People are obviously willing to pay for pretty cosmetics, as many other games have demonstrated (PoE, for many of us here it seems). Honestly, I could see people paying for fancy artwork on the main menu, or different themes for the UI in game too, but character cosmetics seem to be where its at. Personally, I’ve enjoyed the art style of Lost Epoch so far. I have faith that the art team would be able to get creative and make some wonderfully unique and gorgeous / badass cosmetics people would fall in love with.

Lastly, I have a lot of faith a solid, logical and smart decision will be made. The fact that we’re having this discussion between devs & community here and on Discord goes a long way in instilling early faith in the business model.

Right!

So it seems a nominal fee supplemented with MTX is fairly popular so far. In the interests of furthering the discussion I’ll try playing devil’s advocate and throw a few curveballs.

 

Fraud: There are several websites known as grey markets where people resell keys. In addition to hampering efforts to facilitate regional pricing, they enable fraud on a massive scale. People use fraudulent credit card information to purchase keys, and then sell them on as quickly as possible. When the fraud is discovered, a chargeback is performed. This results in 1) a total refund, 2) a punitive fee, 3) increased costs of doing business as the company is viewed suspiciously by financial institutions.

Path of Exile completely dodges this by not having any keys to be purchased and resold. While the comparatively low price point would make Last Epoch less attractive to these individuals, many buy games on those sites out of habit as much as anything - and there’d still be thousands to be made in performing such fraud.

Publishers who rescind such keys en masse (e,g, Ubisoft) have faced significant backlash for doing so. Despite making a conscious effort to go to a shady site, once people “have paid” for something, they do feel entitled to keep it.

Indie dev tinyBuild nearly collapsed in the face of a staggering number of chargebacks.

 

Stash tabs: It is undeniable that stash tabs would receive a less hostile reception in a F2P game where eventually needing to pay some money is anticipated, than in a B2P game where people already have. While perhaps not 100% of people would choose to buy them, the overall cost of several stash tabs could be larger than the suggested $15 box price, and the game being F2P could mean a larger playerbase. Combined, this could mean more money made.

Would you accept stash tabs being sold in a B2P game?

If so, would it affect your impression of the company?

GGG’s business model very much revolves around generating good will and monetizing it. If EHG try selling stash tabs in a B2P game, they run the risk of being seen as greedy. GGG make a significant effort to be active on Reddit, have staff on community podcasts, and post a news post every day. None of this is accidental. They heavily invest in their public image.

 

Promotion: Valve tends to heavily promote F2P games with ethical monetisaion on Steam - if EHG don’t have a lot of money to spend on advertising, this could be a big deal. Word of mouth (notably Reddit) tends to do great things for F2P games monetised fairly. Fewer people would get excited about the monetisation of a game which they’ve paid for.

Well, the people that are going to be the ones RMT’ing and botting will be making more than enough money to rebuy a copy of the game for $14.99 if you really think about it. I know you guys are taking inspiration from games like Path Of Exile and I think adopting the same sort of style of business would be the most beneficial. At the end of the day, if people like how you operate your business, they will stick around. People may or may not like the changes you make in the game, as long as they aren’t the complete wrong decision they won’t leave because they like the business. Making this game a completely free to play game from the beginning (excluding early access of course) in my opinion in vital to the games success.

You will certainly get a lot of people judging the game based off the initial investment to get into the game. I think this has dramatically benefited the success of POE because there is no initial investment.

TL:DR - Make the game free to play from launch and give supporter options for cool looking shit and something similar to the stash tab system in POE (Not sure what you are going for exactly).

You are hitting all the right points in favor of f2p with MTX. It’s a very good option and we might end up with it.

I do not like F2P at all. I would rather pay for a game up front and a monthly sub. Although, I do like micro-transactions for pets, mounts, and cosmetics. A company can make a ton of money from micro-transactions, especially if you are coming out with new stuff to purchase frequently. Thank you for not even considering P2W!

Lex

Why not f2p then?

My opinion is that the game should a have a completely free experience so players can try the game before buying (maybe locking at a certain level or content), and having the full game for an affordable price of 15€/$. But make sure the F2P don’t live in a bubble and let them interact with the rest of the community. So they can have a feel of what they are missing out from the full game players. Would also be a plus if you could give the F2P players the full gameplay experience but less content. That would make the game enjoyable because it would feel like a DLC and not something you are forced into. And to be honest there is quite some people that enjoy Twinks, and may have fun with that on the that level barrier.

You make a lot of great points there, JPDayz.

The only concern I’d raise is that if people pay money upfront they might have higher expectations of EHG’s ability to keep chat spam-free, and a F2P demo (or whatever you want to call it) gives the RMT crowd a way in the door. When a game is Free To Play entirely, people tend to be more accepting of the challenges the devs face in combating spam.

A common way of mitigating some of the spam is by placing level requirements so that there’s more opportunity to detect that a given account is controlled by a bot and to deal with it before it gains the ability to flood chat channels with nonsense. If the game is B2P with a limited F2P experience, you run the risk of people basically only being able to chat once they’ve run out of content to experience, which might feel either awkward - or an intentional way of trying to get money out of them.

I prefer PoE’s model

F2P.

14.99 plus future mtx sales seems like the way to go.Nice price to give the game a shot.

A lot of geat posts about the <span lang=“en”>advantages and disadvantages</span> of each model.
I prefer POE model : F2P with MTX and stash transactions.

I believe it will atract a lot of players to test the game, stream it, talk about it and it is very important for a small company.
F2P for online game
B2P for offline game

The offline game (if you still plan to do both versions, I don’t know how hard it will be) will give you money upfront to finance the online version.

Tough situation for Eleventh Hour Games. I’m not going to make this an extremely long post because I definitely could but F2P and MTX just doesn’t sound appealing at all. If I was the project manager and I adopted this budget option, I would be worried the first couple of months.

B2P, keep it competitive and the scope creep you guys collect through stretch goals, plan appropriate for.

Cosmetics including skins/animations are the ONLY thing I would support buying after a B2P. Unless it was a full blown expansion.

I really hope it’s free to play. At least in the beginning. This game looks like a ton of fun to play and I’m hoping to be a part of it. I don’t mind paying $15 dollars or whatever the initial price may be, but for somebody that doesn’t use Steam or PayPal the payment method isn’t as easy to pull off. I wish it was as easy as going to a retail store and buying the game or digital code. Or even mailing the money to an address with my account name on it, and bingo, I’ll have access to playing this game.

I also come from the greatest RPG era. I played Diablo 2 and Diablo 2: LoD since 2000 and 2001. Diablo 3 and Path of Exile since 2013. And I even played Marvel Heroes since 2013, before it shut down in November of 2017. I also played a little Titan Quest, Drakensang Online and a few others along the way.

I completely understand you have to make money but if there’s an initial buying fee, I’ll have to figure out how and where to pay for it. If there’s a way to get it without having to create a Steam account and what not. Or I’ll have to learn that PayPal thing if that’s my only choice. I’m hoping it’s as easy as downloading the game client directly from this website. I would like an excuse not to play Diablo 2, Diablo 3, Path of Exile and even Path of Diablo anymore.

Last Epoch looks like an incredible action RPG that I could play into the next decade, assuming you guys last that long, but for now I must contain my excitement because I don’t even know if I’ll be able to play this game if there’s an initial pricing fee. It’s not that I can’t afford it, but more or less, I don’t know of an easy payment method that works for me at this time.

Regardless of what you decide to do I’ll try my best to support you in any way I can. Whether it’s my experience of playing these games or just to be a friendly support on the website. Best of luck to all of you!

DreamTeam - Thanks for highlighting your concern about the game being exclusive to Steam. Is there an alternative store you’d be more comfortable buying from, e.g. GOG or Humble Bundle? Would you prefer purchases to be handled by a store like that, or by EHG and a payment provider (e.g. Stripe)? I can’t promise anything, but we do care about your feedback.

A payment provider by EHG sounds easier for people like me that are from an older time of playing RPGs. But I’ll see what I can do to catch up to the modern times of gaming. I may look into setting up a Steam account for the first time.

I never had to use Steam before because all the games I had played before were either physical copies bought at the store, CD or digital code, or they were downloadable directly from the website. Last Epoch is the first action RPG that I’m excited about that’s this new (2018).

Cool, thanks for taking the time to respond - I appreciate it. :slight_smile:

I’ve passed on your feedback. Like I said in my previous post - please understand that I can’t make any guarantees on this, but we’ll certainly look into it.

1 Like

Hi all, in my opinion best would be to pay fixed price at the beginning, than allow some microtansactions in the game, but only for cosmetics.

I agree on paying a small fixed price up front and for those who really enjoy the game (and want to further support the team/vision) the option of micro transactions in the form of cosmetics, portraits, and non combat pets. Down the road the possibility/ option of paid xpacs and or character packs for those still enjoying the game and want something new/ more.

Hello! I am also with the small fixed price + micro-transaction. Not a huge fan of the player-base that free games can garner ( I guess I have bad memories). But I agree that PoE has shown its possible to pull off the f2p model pretty well. I wouldn’t even mind paying $14.99ish for every expansion (GrimDawn, D3 style) but I guess that might scare some people off. Maybe have support bundles where people can pay for the game/expansions if they want to contribute but otherwise its free+mtx?

edit: I guess the support page takes care of the last point, but still could work for expansions or something. xD