Hi there,
This is my first post ever on this forum. I have played so many games of this genre. The golden rule of any game is it cant be pay to win. I strongly advocate a subscription based model 9.99 usd every month or 25.99 usd every 3 months. It is because it allows fresh, regular content creation and creates jobs!. Most RPG become stale and use recycled content (LAZY) after launch. This should be your main income generator. Your secondary revenue generator should be cosmetics (alternate spell animations, pets, armour illusions you get the idea). I really liked your kickstarter campaign and i am really looking forward to your finished product.
Cheers
Although I understand the arguments for the subscription but I can hardly imagine this game , as ambitious as it may be, which is running on a low budget facing big competitors (D3, PoE, D4 in a couple years, and in the meantime some big MMO hack’n slash such as Project TL or Lost Ark, not mentioning Wolcen - and these are just for the genre, I don’t count the other big upcoming titles with subscription) and not designed to be a MMO in the first place, to truly be good and original enough to feed the company each month with a subscription by making the players choose it over some other robust stuff, it all looks pretty reckless to me and it’s quite flipping the coin if it doesn’t work out it will probably go free to play which is an uncertain land when it’s by imperative.
To me buy to play with some cosmetics microtransaction (only because it is a small indie company, I find it intolerable to get the habit of having several economic models at once) or free to play à la PoE (only cosmetics) should work well.
my 2 cents for what its worth i dont mind paying something for a good game i bought grim dawn when it was early access i bought every on grim dawn plus all expan why because i like it i like single player i like the fact if my internet goes down i can still play … if you make a single player game real good like grim dawn and occasionally have dlc and expans i will buy
not so with poe yes ive been with them since beta but i havent spent that much money on it … a few stash tabs and thats pretty much it
I really like what you guys have decided on! I’ll likely be purchasing a pack high enough to get Alpha/Beta access soon, just because I want to support you guys. I think it’s pretty cool of you to only sell the game for $10-15 and promise to keep it Buy To Play. I’m excited for this! 
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To be honest. 15 dollars isnt going to stop someone from mass botting, because 15 dollars to make easy money is nothing. I mean look at diablo 2. It’s just going to deter people who want to play the game. I’m all for paying for mtx, but I wouldn’t want to buy the game to. I’m looking forward to release I been following since kickstarter. Maybe in November I can grab alpha access. I would love to be part of the process
People might still bot. But each bot is $15 into EHG coffers. Which they can use to develop the game further or to combat bots.
Fraudulent charges are a real and serious problem, common amongst botters. In the end EHG would lose money due to chargebacks.
Since people keep posting I will throw my two cents in the pot.
The decline in gaming happened in the mid 2000s, that was when microtransactions were imported from the Far East as a business model. I won’t go into the psychology exploitation of the human mind behind it, suffice to say it’s unscrupulous.
Later on we saw things like lootboxes, etc. or the most egregious example - full price game AND micros.
People should now realise (and if you don’t studies are there to prove it) that free games are often the MOST expensive, exceptionally stoic individuals excluded.
Games therefore should be charged at a reasonable price ($15 is incredibly cheap, give people a very good, limited (i.e. no trading) demo and they will come back and buy it even if it was $30 or more).
To those saying botters/farmers use fraud to buy games… those same people would abuse any other system even worse. The base cost of the game would deter them a lot more than if it was F2P. The more expensive a game the fewer botters you would see because poorer countries (which is where those people are) cannot risk making a few $ when the upfront cost is so high.
And 11th Hour would just have to suspend the fraudulent accounts asap, that’s the nature of business.
Go ahead 11th hour and push up the base cost. Offer a good demo to get eyeballs on your game and become successful and treat your customers like family.
P.S. if you’re looking for investors message me =)
In the wake of playing (and burning through a huge number of dollars on) PoE, I would state it will be hard for me to go to an ARPG that isn’t F2P with non-P2W MTX. I don’t figure I would try taking a gander at an amusement in this class had a higher value point than some place around $30 USD. It’s not totally about the cash, it’s more that much else besides $30 I would most likely rather provide for GGG for a supporter pack or focuses as opposed to betting on another amusement being great or not.
Ok, having NEVER played PoE I can’t comment on their style of in-game payments. However, I have played D2 - D3 and much prefer the initial payment with paid for upgrades, since then I can leave a game and come back to it whenever I want. Blizzard of course have other avenues of revenue.
I have played (or did play) a lot of World of Tanks and whilst I was in Asia I probably put in around $1000 over 4 years. Some of this was for Premium time to quicken the grind and for Premium tanks because I wanted to collect them. The big caveat is that they don’t allow region transfers so I haven’t really been bothered with WoT here in EU.
With reference to the ‘key’ situation, why not go the way Blizzard have and tie the game to an account, so no need for a key that could become a pawn of fraud. Make it transferable (if possible through your databank) so that players who eventually move countries (this happens more than players realise) can continue to play the game wherever they are.
I feel MTX are ok depending on their value within the game, obviously cosmetics or perhaps a few gimmicks or a few boosters, especially for those with less time on their hands to grind out their chars.
For me personally, its all about time versus money. If I can cut a grind by 5 hours (from 10) that is a huge saving and considering the local hourly rate (let’s say £10) that is a saving of £50 or 5 hours, whichever you prefer to work with.
HOWEVER please don’t go fully down the F2P route, it seems to be great upfront, free game download but over time it can become a massive drain, and most players feel that an exaggerated grind (to encourage players to opt to buy Premium time) is overall detrimental to the player experience.
Of course, you could run with Booster packs like PoE or even sell comparable items to those players can find ingame as long as the RNGness of it all remains fair. It is one of my main issues with D3 that if you aren’t lucky with a drop or the rolls you can find yourself at a stage where the grind time becomes overly tedious trying to just find that one item for an upgrade. I have had so many lesser value drops or bad stats that I gave up, I was under the top 100 on the leader-board at one stage but couldn’t advance due to poor drops. It killed the game for me.
So to tick the boxes:
Initial outlay (B2P) Yes
Cosmetic or useful MTX Yes
Worthwhile Updates aka WoW Yes
F2P NO
And just to tag on a few ideas…
Loot boxes: WoT have them over the Xmas period to coincide with their Xmas Missions where you can buy a box full of items to complete various Xmas Trees or other decorations which when complete give extra boosters. In the box you can also receive a Premium tank, the main point is that the total value of items received is around 3-5x their paid for value. So if the box cost £15 you normally ended up with around £45 worth of ingame items etc. So well worth their money.
Boosters: Premium time to give you xtra XP bonues was always on a day basis, you could buy 7-30 or more days worth, but for most gamers it is a waste due to not being able to play 24/7 and for casuals a complet no no. So they introduced booster packs which gave you added bonuses but for a limited period of a few hours. Which really suits the casual gamer who has maybe 3-4 hours time to play 3 times a week, open the game, unlock a 2 hour booster and you know that if you play for the next two hours you aren’t wasting money.
Premium Items: again, for the casual gamer, who doesn’t have the time to grind out some of the higher tier items or the luck of the drop. Personally I have no problem with a weapon being a MTX item as long as it is slightly less comparable with an in-game drop or doesn’t have the same properties (can’t be re-forged or upgraded etc).
Games like Last Epoch should be for everyone and available to suit every type of wallet or free time player.
I’m going to lock this thread as our decision was made quite some time ago - and while I’ve been hesitating to lock the most obvious place to provide feedback on it, quite a lot of posts are continuing the discussion apparently unaware of the decision having been made.
Feel free to create new threads for feedback if you’d like.