Elder Scrolls Online Director Explains Opting For Subscriptions

[thewatergamer]

I guess I see your point but its still no excuse bethesda, why not take the GW2 route and have 60$ up front again?
Also not all F2P MMO's have area restrictions...

This is not so much your "vision" but more "We want more money and here is our BS Justification"

 

[Dragonbums]

Here is the thing with payment and consumers.

You can justify it with 30 legitimate reasons as to why this is necessary for your MMO.

At the end of the day, it isn't going to get the majority of the people who don't want a subscription based MMO, to pay for your subscription based MMO.

My opinion? I don't care.
Especially when your ads for the game didn't show the diversity in the races of these factions sans white elves, dwarves, and humans, and for the most part it just felt like a generic conquer the kingdom MMO with the Elder Scrolls slapped on the top.
Showing some of the more defined races like the Khajiit, Dunmer, Orcs, and Argonians would of helped people immensely on identifying which faction belongs to who. This could also of been an opportunity to show case the tension going within the factions as well.
Seeing as how a lot of these alliances are formed by races that don't exactly have a pretty past together. Especially with the Argonians and Dunmer. Adds more depth and "Elder Scrolls" feel to the whole thing.

But they didn't.
They copped out, and did the same old same old with the MMO.

 

[Dastardly]

Firor said The Elder Scrolls Online is a "world," ...

This is only true if, as with early MMOs, there is more to do in the game than combat. And, to be clear, I mean non-combat gameplay as a viable playstyle. Look at games like Star Wars Galaxies, where early on in that game's life, you could be a full-time crafter and never find yourself without something engaging to do.

Then WoW-like games came along that reduced all non-combat gameplay to combat-adjacent -- crafting was just to make combat gear, and you'd have to play the combat side of things to get the most important ingredients, and the crafting process was "put ingredient in box and click and get exact copy of item everyone else has." This, along with the removal or heavy instancing of player housing, took away any claims that MMOs had to being "worlds."

They're lobbies. Visual lobbies in which you wander and putter about while waiting for a group to fill up to go to Instance X or Battleground Y. There's no life to them, and there's no opportunity for players to leave a footprint in the world when they're not logged in. Early MMOs provided value-for-dollar by creating the feeling that players were buying real estate in a virtual world, not just paying admission to a theme park.

 

[funksobeefy]

I thought single player games were the true Elder Scrolls experiance

 

[Jamous]

Still won't be buying it, but that -is- a good reasoning. You could still just use a Buy To Play model, like Guild Wars, instead. That seems to work just fine.

 

[StriderShinryu]

I am happy, whether I am in the minority or not, that it's a subscription model. F2P is too scattered. Why does everyone think and compare it to GW2? GW2 is successful, maybe but it has only been out for a year and I know tons of people stopped playing, due to content. With that said, subscription worked fine for a while and if they actually intend to take some WOW players, those people are used to a subscription.

Most people who stopped playing GW2 due to content did so because they were expecting your standard end game dungeon/gear grind. GW2 does not provide that, and the publically stated plans they released prior to the game even coming out confirmed that they weren't really ever planning to. Instead, GW2 players get a series of storyline and activity oriented releases every two weeks (not to mention content additions and patches). It's apples and oranges, really.

 

[Yuuki]

Still doesn't justify charging $15 a month, i.e. the same as World Of Warcraft.

I could see $8-10 a month working out a lot better for them.

 

[LordNerevar]

This Firor guy talks but all I hear is "Bullshit excuse, bullshit, blah blah blah. Oh and did you want some extra excuse to go with that bullshit?"

 

[carlh267]

I really hate to be the nitpicky one here, but...

Firor said The Elder Scrolls Online is a "world," and Bethesda doesn't want monetization options taking players out of it.

Bethesda also wants a "steady forecastable revenue stream" so it can effectively plan and pay for content updates. TESO will launch with the Mages and Fighters Guild questlines built-in, and Bethesda plans to add the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood in a future update.

Bethesda is not the developer of TESO. Zenimax Online studios is. From the source article:

The Elder Scrolls Online director Matt Firor has explained to Eurogamer why Zenimax Online Studios has decided to charge a monthly subscription for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game at a time when most observers consider the business model outdated.

This isn't even the first time that this error has occurred with the news reports on this site.

 

[cidbahamut]

Firor said The Elder Scrolls Online is a "world," and Bethesda doesn't want monetization options taking players out of it. "It's like, I go into a dungeon, if I don't have access to the dungeon it pops up a window: you don't have access to this, go buy 50 credits. We didn't want that experience. That's not an Elder Scrolls experience," he told Eurogamer.

Neither is an MMO.

I don't understand how this project got approved at all. The reasons I play MMOs and the reasons I play Elder Scrolls games are completely different and in many cases mutually exclusive. The serene solitude of exploring the wilderness is not something you can achieve when there are other people present, so I'm sitting here scratching my head trying to figure out why they'd want to undermine at least one of the core tenets of The Elder Scrolls series.

It's utterly baffling.

 

[weirdee]

counterargument: while we avoid the perils of upselling, we still have the original issue of subscription games, which basically incentivizes the skinner box model, which grants us the treadmill with no actual reward, and the most recently demonstrated flaw in which content does not last nearly as long as it seemed when it was being developed

 

[Feylynn]

My problem with that perception is that I find it to be the opposite.
I find the subscriptions loom over me with their dark cloud of obligation and make me feel bad about the game. I like being able not need to play a game, sometimes I don't feel like playing or have something else to do. On its own the previous is not an issue but I also am a fan of efficient use of resources. The idea that not playing is actively making the times I do play a worse $-Time conversion tends to make me bitter and constantly aware that it is just a game.

Just to jump to the extreme end of the scale I tend to just assume something like League of Legends is an immersive world. I identify pretty in lore with the champions I play and don't find micro transactions or lore breaking skins detracts from the integrity of their setting. A more agreeable example might be Guildwars 2 or Firefall that have very coherent uncompromised worlds with no subscription. I don't even find NeverWinter distracts me and that's pretty excessive and vocal secondary currency.

I respect their vision but they have chosen the more distracting monitization as far as I'm concerned.

 

[RJ 17]

"It's like, I go into a dungeon, if I don't have access to the dungeon it pops up a window: you don't have access to this, go buy 50 credits. We didn't want that experience. That's not an Elder Scrolls experience," he told Eurogamer. "We wanted to do monetization outside of the game. So, if I pay for a month at a time, I have 100 percent of the game. I don't have to worry about paying one more cent. I'll never run into a pay gate and I'll be in the world."

Ummmm...is this actually a thing? Honestly, I'm asking...are there MMO's out there that say "Please pay to enter this dungeon"? The last (and only) MMO I played was WoW up until the end of Burning Crusade. Now WoW obviously had a subscription fee, but that's not really relevant to what I'm asking. Quite simply I want to know if there's ACTUALLY MMO's out there that charge players before they can enter a dungeon. Because that's honestly the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. More ridiculous than Ben Affleck as Batman. More ridiculous than Don Mattrick going to Zynga to save it. Even more ridiculous than the new Killer Instinct charging people to unlock fighters.

....ok, that last one is actually the fighting-game equivalent of this situation. Still though, are there actually MMO's out there that do this? If not, what the FUCK is this guy talking about?

 

[UltimatheChosen]

...Are there pay gates or pay worlds? I was under the understanding that the F2P model had things you can purchase but didn't restrict access to areas/portions of the game.

It varies from game to game, LOTRO has pay-gates, as does DDO Online, I believe SWTOR does too, the only F2P game I can think of that doesn't is Rift, but you can't access the expansion content without paying sooo?

You can access the expansion content for free in Rift, actually. (If by "content", you mean "areas".) The expansion souls are not free, but those are basically one extra spec for each class rather than actual areas-- it's never a case of being unable to go somewhere or do something, there's just a single playstyle that you won't be able to access.

 

[iseko]

I dont like f2p models. rather have subs. very few games make good f2p models. and to be honest those games suck. teso should be subbed. like he said, teso is always about exploration and wandering around. finding caves and forts and what not. trying to enter a cave and having a popup asking you to payup... well that would suck.

im a little puzzled by the fifteen hour content bit. u think that is alot? djeezes on an mmo thats terrible! this is not an offline game. make guilds 15 hours of contents and your ship will be sinking faster then swtor. unless ure going for more of an swg experience where u can be/do whatever.

ps: typed this on phone so... yea.. srr

 

[Lieju]

That explains why want that model, but why they think it will work.

Now the question is just how long it will take them to change to free-to-play, and how many gamers will wait until that happens.

 

[misg]

If they deliver an exceptional MMO, that had new features and game-play that has never been done sure I would pay 15 a month, I have with many different mmo's for years. Here is where the problem lays for me, I'm older and busier then I was in my 20's. I'm not going to buy the game if I don't have the time to play it with it being p2p. If I figure I can only play 10 hours in the first month that may not give me enough time to know if I want to continue my sub. Which means unless I find myself with what I consider a reasonable amount to experience the game during the first month, I'll probably skip the purchase until I do. The means they may get no money from me at all.

I wish them the best but I don't see this as a positive right now.

 

[dementis]

I've lost all interest in this game by now, as a few others have said Guild wars 2 is a great example of how a MMO should be done. Once you've bought the game you have access to everything and the new content is all completely free, all the real money transactions don't have any effect on the game and there are no pay gates for dungeons or any sort of advertisement for the paid stuff.

 

[Kahani]

I don't think it's such a terrible decision, although obviously it will depend very much on whether the game is actually any good. It's not just about paywalls for dungeons. Even games like GW2 which have a pretty decent F2P model still constantly remind you that they want you to buy more stuff. Things like locked inventory slots, boxes you need to buy keys for, items that need paid currency to buy, skills you can only get after upgrading your account, and so on. Even if you're not actually prevented from playing parts of the game, you're constantly reminded that it's a product trying to make money off you, and that really isn't great for immersion. The subscription model has its drawbacks, but so does F2P. It always seems odd that people are always so desperate to attack subscription games as if there's no possible reason anyone could ever want to do anything other than F2P.

Your most direct competitor, the game you've been modeling yourselves off of, is Guild Wars 2. GW2 is releasing "major content patches" entirely for free every two weeks.

I have to disagree there. GW2 isn't releasing major content patches at all, let alone every two weeks. What they actually do is put in a couple of extra side quests that are only available for a very limited time and which often require you to play every single day to have any chance of actually seeing even that. As far as a casual player like myself is concerned, the game is still essentially identical to its original release.