Bethesda Exec Defends Elder Scrolls Online's Subscription Model

[Brockyman]

You're missing the point, .... But at least you seem more reasonable than the people who don't believe in DLC for games.

For example, if I buy Watch Dogs, which is marketed primarily as a single player experience (I forget if there is MP or not) for $60, it would be wrong of them to ask me to pay more money for that same game (with no extras) in a month or a year, that would be WRONG... we agree on that. However, in 4 or 5 years if the MP doesn't have anyone on the servers, I do think they have a right to shut them down then keep the expense of having a game no one plays online.

However, if you purchase a game like WOW or ESO then you KNOW GOING IN what to expect. It's not a "rip off" if they tell you from day one of development what to expect. I don't know too much about WOW, but I just looked at their website and their newest expansion is $50 and consts $15 a month (they had multi month plans for cheaper, but still). From what Bethesda is apparently saying, you won't have to buy the new content.

I am skeptical of the game for sure. I've heard good and bad and we will see in April (June for me, I'm not a member of the Glorious PC Master Race), but its intellectually dishonest to say that something is a rip off when they are open and clear about their policies.

I honestly think they should give people that purchase the game 2 months subscription free in order to really test out the game and make the risk a bit less.

Find some common ground here?

Honestly, I doubt common ground can be had. I just do not buy the idea that because it's an MMO or that they tell you that you have to pay a subscription fee and/or Pay to Win on the box somehow makes those fees not a ripoff. A ripoff that most people don't care about I grant you, but a ripoff nonetheless. Just because people are willing to live with a ripoff doesn't make it not a ripoff, and it's not as though people who want to play these MMOs have another option to still play the game if they don't want to be ripped off anyway. It's either pay this fee every month and/or buy these things necessary to play the game or you get nothing. The free months only allow the customer to decide if they want to continue playing, and whether they do or not they are unable to play more unless they pay up. The free months are designed to get players hopelessly hooked so they feel like they have to anyway, it's not for the player's benefit. If they could get away with it they'd probably charge for the first month or 2 as well. With a single player game or even many multiplayer ones you can pick it up, play it for a week and then drop it for a few months and then pick it up and play it again, with a subscription MMO if you don't shell out money you can never play that game again, or a severely stripped down version at the most. That's if you're lucky and they haven't decided to shut down the servers, so you have to find a private server if you want to play, if one exists or is even allowed to exist. Private servers are another thing that makes the whole concept that they need you to pay to play B.S. BTW, if it were true private servers wouldn't be possible.

For the record, I also hate how DLC is implemented in most cases, which is as something that's taken out of the game and sold to the customer piecemeal to suck all the money out of their customer's wallet they possibly can, on disk DLC and day 1 DLC mostly. DLC made by the developers to add to the game a few months after release I support, but not most other forms DLC takes. Ironically, how the Elder Scrolls/Fallout Bethesda does DLC is how the entire industry should do it, but greed removes sense.

I agree 100% on Day One DLC! Nothing should be "removed" from a game to make it DLC.

I also don't agree with "pay to win" in the form of over powered weapons/perks/skills to make multiplayer unbalanced or that you must by x item to win the game. However, I don't have a problem with micro transactions. If someone wants to drop a $1 or 2 on some camoes or cosmetic character customization, ect, then I think that's kinda a neat feature for those who enjoy that level of customization

Agree to disagree on the rest. I somewhat see your point, but I still think it's a more "buyer beware" than calling people "greedy". I know people (functional, non addicted people) that love WOW and Old Republic and Star Trek Online (both in subscription and pay to play form) and are very happy and satisfied with their product, and I think that's the true measure. Just b/c I may hate something or you may hate something doesn't mean it's "wrong" I think the new character in InFamous Second Son looks like a freaking douche, but it's not going to stop me from playing the game, lol

 

[TheNewGuy]

I don't have a problem with this. I can see why others might not like it, but I don't have a problem with it.

I'll probably still get the game, probably not at launch though. Hopefully they'll release the Imperials sometime later as DLC or something.

 

[Sight Unseen]

Not going anywhere near a game that locks an entire race behind collector's edition. I hope they fail and shut it down within a year, devs/pubs need to learn not to be cunts.

I agree that it's kind of shitty that they did that, but I very much doubt that it will be a permanent lock for people who pre-ordered the imperial edition and even if it is I don't really care because the imperials are the most generic and boring race anyway and I wouldn't have played them unless I got bored of all the other more interesting races and wanted to try out their racial line. There's no extra story content to be gained or anything. The biggest advantage they gain is getting a free horse which is kind of unfair but meh.

So for me that's not that big of a problem.

 

[endtherapture]

But since you bring up examples let's turn the question around.
Can you name an AAA MMO developed and marketed for F2P that has rolling influx of meaningful content and a steady player base?
Can you name an AAA B2P MMO that gets significant content updates and keeps the players after they burn through the first couple hundred hours of release content?

Lord of the Rings Online
Guild Wars 2.

Question answered.

 

[PuckFuppet]

I've said it before so I'm going to say it again. I like the subscription model. I think/have seen evidence supporting the idea that the subscription models keeps production executes hell bent on the bottom line off of the backs of the creative and development team responsible for creating new content. Allowing better, hopefully, and more meaningful content updates to the game as a whole.

 

[Someone Depressing]

...Did anyone even ask for this?

The whole point of The Elder Scrolls are discovery, and learning about the land you're in.

Now, that except dumnbed down ridiculously, and with hundreds of AFKers and merchants in the game's central hub trying to sell me useless shit, high-level shit, or literal shit.

And now I get to pay £75 for it.

 

[Zac Jovanovic]

But since you bring up examples let's turn the question around.
Can you name an AAA MMO developed and marketed for F2P that has rolling influx of meaningful content and a steady player base?
Can you name an AAA B2P MMO that gets significant content updates and keeps the players after they burn through the first couple hundred hours of release content?

Lord of the Rings Online
Guild Wars 2.

Question answered.

No... I already talked about those.
LOTRO was made as P2P and marketed as such until it switched to F2P, it's not comparable with a game that was developed with funding of a F2P game.
And GW2 too, it's a great game but it's very short for an MMO. It lost more than 3/4 of the playerbase in the first couple months. People that stick to it for more than a couple hundred hours are very rare, because, in words you will most often get as a description of the game by people who played it "It's great but there's nothing to do in the endgame".

 

[Nieroshai]

When you have to go out and DEFEND your whateveritis you're doing, then there IS something wrong with it, otherwise no one would be complaining to this extent.

You have to BUY the game, pay a monthly FEE while also having IN-GAME purchases, and a race LOCKED AWAY in the collector's shit, which at the same time gave you a "be whatever side with whatever race" bonus. Yeah no, fuck you.

If that logic applied to every time someone was being a dick to me, I wouldn't have friends. Sometimes one must respond or defend.

 

[Atmos Duality]

"We feel pretty strongly about the support we're going to have for the game and what you're going to get for those dollars," he said. "We're also very confident in our ability to support it with content. And not content of the magnitude of, it's a new month, here's a new sword or here's a funny hat--but content that is real and significant and it feels like regular and consistent DLC releases."

Why do I get the feeling that you're going to eat those words within the next year?
Oh right, because you're Pete Hines, regular contender for and 2 time champion of the "Pete the Liar" title.

The problem isn't just the subscription model; it's the retail charge + subscription model + DLC premiums.
You're effectively charging three times for some content and twice for all content.

Now, while it's your right to charge whatever you want for your products, don't try to rebut consumer criticism about high pricing with "It's worth more because I say so." (it's just as stupid as any "entitlement" argument)

Give us reasons, not promises. Show us proof.

 

[duwenbasden]

Why can't I, instead of paying $15/month, pay $20 for, say, 40 hours of in game time that I can use anytime within 1 year? Why isn't there a prepaid model for MMOs like cellphones?

Also, dat combat in TESO. dat "Lol he's a noob, he used dodge." combat.

 

[Atmos Duality]

...Did anyone even ask for this?

The whole point of The Elder Scrolls are discovery, and learning about the land you're in.

Now, that except dumnbed down ridiculously, and with hundreds of AFKers and merchants in the game's central hub trying to sell me useless shit, high-level shit, or literal shit.

And now I get to pay £75 for it.

Yes, plenty of people asked for it and for years now.
Since Morrowind, year in and year out, there was ALWAYS talk among fans of wanting a TES MMORPG.

But of course, when the typical fan imagined their TES MMORPG, most envision a massive player driven world where real interesting people supplement or replace the mindless drone-like NPCs, do quests together and stay in character.

Not the reality that is the MMORPG genre: Spreadsheet Combat and of players performing mindless grind like drones; ironic, no?

 

[Karadalis]

-

But since you bring up examples let's turn the question around.
Can you name an AAA MMO developed and marketed for F2P that has rolling influx of meaningful content and a steady player base?
Can you name an AAA B2P MMO that gets significant content updates and keeps the players after they burn through the first couple hundred hours of release content?

A is impossible since none of the late tripple A games where ever developed with F2P in mind since everyone and their grandmother thought "we can do what WoW does"

Only to then turn around and realize "OH SHIT PEOPLE ARE NOT WILLING TO FORK OVER 14 EUROS A MONTH FOR OUR COPY OF WoW"

Wich shows that subscriptions are simply a relic of the past. Just because WoW still does it doesnt mean its a viable model for everyone else.

Time and time again it was shown that people are not willing to subscribe to any other mmo then WoW in the fantasy genre. How hard is that to understand?

NONE of the subscription games of the last couple of years managed to hold itselfe on subscriptions for longer then a year.. you know why? THEY COULDNT HOLD THEIR PLAYER NUMBERS

The same thing you lament about f2p titles.. the lack of content and longevity where the same problems that plagued these games. Players rushed through the content of SWTOR to find that there was no end content or that it was unfinished and a buggy mess.. so they left.

No amount of subscriptions is magically churn out content at a monthly schedule.. not even blizzard is able to do that and they have one of the biggest developer teams on the market.

The idea that a subscription is somehow a garuantee for content and longeveity is thus simply false.. your opinion is wrong.. the facts are on the table

Subscriptions are not successfull at keeping players in your game if your name isnt WoW (or EVE wich has an extreme niche for itselfe that no one else tried to dip in yet.. mostly because theres no market left to share)

As for B2P...

again dismissing the success of guildwars 1 and 2 simply cause you dont like the game is not a valid thing to do. Both games ran on B2P both games had seen lots of content added (Expansions in Gw1 free monthly little content upgrades in GW2).

If the COMPLETLY FREE content upgrades in GW2 arent enough for you thats to bad... but it does not disqualify the game as not being developed upon.

Look the borderline is once again this:

Subscriptions dont work... after WoW NO other MMO was able to hold itselfe as a subscription title on the market for any meaningfull time and with any meaningfull player numbers.. your insistance that subscriptions somehow relate to product quality was also proven wrong by many subscription titles simply not churning out more content for the money they demanded at a pace that the players demanded or the content was highly buggy and riddled with glitches due to hasty coding (TOR, Warhammer online etc.)

So how about i ask you a question:

Name me ONE successfull subscription MMO that is not WoW, EvE or Final fantasy. Go ahead... show me the rows of high quality tripple A titles that manage to add "meaningfull" content each month paid by monthly subscriptions with high player numbers.

Chances are thought that there are none despite the three i allready named.

snip

Hooboy.. seems GW2 took a turn to the worse since last i played it.

I played it for around a year after it first came out so i havent exactly been on the up and up of their shady dealings lately.

But like you said earlier.. the value for your dollar is immensely higher then in any subscription game up to date.. that is a feat that cannot be simply dismissed.

For the model they initially had in mind the game was and is a huge success and shows that things can be done different.

That they lock content and try to implement pay2winish items now shows a bad influx of greed thought and is infact a sad development. But i guess the extra money is simply to tempting. Why not finaly bring out a real Xpack like they did with GW1 instead of dicking around in the real money shop? Oh well.. corporate greed it is.

Still doesnt change the fact that guildwars 2s concept worked... something you cannot say of any of the subscription mmos of the last 5 to 10 years.

All of them went under or went f2p... none where able to keep their players despite their monthly subscriptions.

Monthly subscriptions are neither a guarantee for success or quality despite what some people in this thread keep claiming, the facts are over there in plain view.. yes right there in the "formerly subscription now f2p titles" corner.

 

[Raioken18]

Australian Prices are pretty insane considering there isn't even a server here. I played in the Beta Stress Test weekend and... the lag does effect gameplay later on. The first few island areas it's alright but when you got to the mainland and to around level 10 you need to roll out of AoE's and that was basically impossible without precog... Anyway pricing here:

$80 for the base game.
$120 for the Special Edition. (Horse Inc).

Then you've got $20 a month for the subscription fee... (at least that's what I was quoted at both my local JB Hi Fi and EB Games).

Meaning if you played for at least a year you are shelling out about $300 (edit: first month is free), and they have micro transactions, and likely a paid expansion model. Buy a horse and a few other xp boosts and you'll likely get to pay ~$400 in your first year.

Don't get me wrong it's a good game, but it is no where near good enough to justify that $400 price tag.

The word from most of the testers is that it would have made an amazing single player experience, but makes for a pretty average mmo.

Edit:
Also the First Person View is useless for midgame combat where the standard don't stand in the fire requires you to be looking at the floor and your character in relation to said floor.

Party combat... so odd. It really highlighted how improved graphics do little for the game. When you are launching arrow directly through a friend, and it uses an aiming reticule... it's just soo awkward.. If your into magic or archery your going to be staring directly at friends backs for a while.

 

[wolfyrik]

I'm fine with the subscription, if we do receive the kind of support and content Hines talks about. And quite frankly, I don't see how we could get that content if it isn't a subscription model. I don't see the attraction of free-to-play (other than the obvious) and I don't see how you could possibly develop a game with a seriously long-term plan for content updates which follows that model.

Having played two betas, I've gone from being sceptical to enthusiastic about the game, and cautiously optimistic about the subscription. I'm looking forward to release for a number of reasons.

This is my hope: that the subscription model leads to a steady stream of content for the foreseeable future, and that content justifies the subscription model.

ESO has

1) You have to pay 60$ to buy it
2) You pay 15$ a month to play it
3) It has a real money shop in game
4) Some content is locked behind a paywall (aka collectors edition)

for this you will receive supposedly 'regular' content updates - untested so far no timescale demonstrated


GW2 has

1) You have to pay 39.99 to play it
2) Real Money shop for convenience/skins

For this you receive actual content updates every fortnight including the Living Story and festivals

GW2 is doing very well still. They're doing for real what ESO claims it will do, without subscription.

 

[wolfyrik]

Well I play GW2 and while I'm a fan I no longer see the free to play model as the only option for mmos because of GW2. What I hate about GW2 is they purposely build in gold sinks each update so you spend your game income on a new back piece or whatever each new update. And let's not even act like the bank space you have is even remotely adequate. You HAVE to buy space to make rooms for all the drops that don't stack well despite being for crafting. (And of course all the new stuff you have to grind for every new patch.) Then there is the miserably low ratio of quality drops as well. So a lot of times you just want to buy gems to convert to gold and buy the good gear and be done with it.

Basically, I have come to resent the not so subtle money grabbing elements built into GW2 and would prefer to pay a monthly fee and be done with the bs. $15 is less than I spend going to the movies one night. And I will get a ton more hours of enjoyment for my money. And no I don't have 8 hours a day to grind in a game anymore now that I'm an adult and work and study my ass off.

So I'm giving ESO a try. Already preordered and the first month is included with the game price. If their end game is better than GW2 (that would not be difficult at all since GW2 doesn't even have raids) and the pvp is as good as I've been hearing I will definitely be sticking around.

So do you get a free month with your full price game or are you being charged straight away day one? Thing is charging you full price for a game that you then have to pay more money again for is stupid. Why not charge $30 for the game and then people might then buy 2 months subs for another $30 - total paid $60 and you can play it for 2 months.

From what i gather Guildwars 2 is f2p and supposed to be amazing from what i saw from the Angry Joe review.

1 month free is industry standard and part of the initial buy price of ESO too.

Guild wars 2 is not free to play but Buy to play. You buy the game and then can log onto their servers whenever you want without having to pay for that "service"

The game finances itselfe through an ingame store that mostly sells stuff like additional character slots (wich you wont need if youre not a compulsive twink maniac that needs over 6 characters) Boost items to level faster, costumes, shiny mounts and vanity pets and some other stuff you dont really NEED to enjoy the game to its fullest.

Did i mention you can buy their premium currency with ingame money? The exchange is expensive as hell but its still possible to access the real money stuff simply by playing the game... if you have the time and patience that is.

Most if not all Free to Play MMOS are shit. There is nothing wrong with a monthly fee. Never has been and never will be.

Well said!! Most people that actually play those mmos agree with you! Too many people debating this topic don't do that and do not realize the kind of experience a free to play pay structure brings.

Crafting items have their own section away from the bank slots, you don't need a bank slot for them. They stack upto 250 units. I have never paid for inventory in GW2 and I have no need to do so. Maybe you haven't played since the inventory/resource merge? Battle tokens etc also have their own section now. They stack like any other currency. I don't know how it is that you need to work so much harder on the game than the rest of us? Maybe just different playstyles.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

You can justify subscription model only if you have a service to provide. It this case, service is the potential content that will come in the future. So here's the question: why would I want to pay for something that is not yet ready? Not even that; why would I want to pay for something that I know nothing about? Cable is a service, right? Or interner. I pay monthly for it and I know what I get every single time. What am I getting from this service? A DLC-ish type of content? Okay, what if I dont like it? Or what if I dont care for it? What then? I am certain no one will refund me. I mean there is no way that every single "content update" will appeal to everyone. And yet I have to pay for it. I dont have to pay for my neighbor's cable? Or his car insurance. Or his electric bills. Honestly, I just dont understand this model.

The service provided is the maintenance of what I assume will have to be a massive amount of servers to contend with the traffic this game will have.

Furthermore, running a good MMO, even when you aren't in the process of creating new content, requires at least some full time staff for maintenance, customer support, arbitration of reported rule violations, ect.

 

[AJey]

You can justify subscription model only if you have a service to provide. It this case, service is the potential content that will come in the future. So here's the question: why would I want to pay for something that is not yet ready? Not even that; why would I want to pay for something that I know nothing about? Cable is a service, right? Or interner. I pay monthly for it and I know what I get every single time. What am I getting from this service? A DLC-ish type of content? Okay, what if I dont like it? Or what if I dont care for it? What then? I am certain no one will refund me. I mean there is no way that every single "content update" will appeal to everyone. And yet I have to pay for it. I dont have to pay for my neighbor's cable? Or his car insurance. Or his electric bills. Honestly, I just dont understand this model.

The service provided is the maintenance of what I assume will have to be a massive amount of servers to contend with the traffic this game will have.

Furthermore, running a good MMO, even when you aren't in the process of creating new content, requires at least some full time staff for maintenance, customer support, arbitration of reported rule violations, ect.

None of what you listed is relevant in the world of Free-to-Play market. LoL is free to play (among many others), and it has a lot of servers, and I'm sure they have permanent staff, but manage not only to survive without subscriptions, but to thrive. I doubt ESO will ever have as many players as MOBAs do, and they wont need as much staff, so subscription based model is not only obsolete, but even detrimental.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Defend all you want, im not buying a game full price, paying for subs every month and you still expect me to pay for extra on top of that. Fuck that. A horse is an extra cost? Its not even a magic horse thats better than normal horses in game. Its extra for a bog standard horse. Sorry Betheda, you just lost a consumer. Gaming has gone from fun to getting every single penny you can drain from a person.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

You can justify subscription model only if you have a service to provide. It this case, service is the potential content that will come in the future. So here's the question: why would I want to pay for something that is not yet ready? Not even that; why would I want to pay for something that I know nothing about? Cable is a service, right? Or interner. I pay monthly for it and I know what I get every single time. What am I getting from this service? A DLC-ish type of content? Okay, what if I dont like it? Or what if I dont care for it? What then? I am certain no one will refund me. I mean there is no way that every single "content update" will appeal to everyone. And yet I have to pay for it. I dont have to pay for my neighbor's cable? Or his car insurance. Or his electric bills. Honestly, I just dont understand this model.

The service provided is the maintenance of what I assume will have to be a massive amount of servers to contend with the traffic this game will have.

Furthermore, running a good MMO, even when you aren't in the process of creating new content, requires at least some full time staff for maintenance, customer support, arbitration of reported rule violations, ect.

None of what you listed is relevant in the world of Free-to-Play market. LoL is free to play (among many others), and it has a lot of servers, and I'm sure they have permanent staff, but manage not only to survive without subscriptions, but to thrive. I doubt ESO will ever have as many players as MOBAs do, and they wont need as much staff, so subscription based model is not only obsolete, but even detrimental.

Free to play games like LoL are much simpler than ESO will be, so the cost of their upkeep is not incredibly comparable. ESO, due to it using more complex graphics, would per users playing be roughly as expensive to maintain as WoW, which uses a subscription.

Furthermore, LoL isn't an MMORPG. I wouldn't even say its game size makes it "massively". It's a different genre, so I don't care if it is free when considering whether to pay to play ESO. Are there any MMORPG's that are good, free to play, ad-free, and don't have real money item transactions? I'd go for that, but I'd much rather pay 15 a month for an MMO than either play a low quality game, one that advertises to me while I play, play genres abundant in free to plays, or compete with people who are willing to sink well more than $15 into items that unbalance the game.