Time for Subscription Model?

Azoic

I used to pay for two WoW accounts, so I am in no way against paying money to play games I enjoy. However, right now, it feels that the only money I am ever tempted to put into the game is for roster slots, since they make them so ridiculously overpriced, it feels like that is the only thing you can spend HP on. And buying roster slots is not fun.

Enter the subscription. They normally release 2 characters a month? I think they should add a $10/month sub, or have varying levels of it, that give things such as roster slots, gift tokens, iso, etc. The amount would depend on how generous D3 was feeling, but it would have to make it worth someone signing up. Heck, have a platinum membership that includes a 10-pack a month or something. Overall, the dedicated players benefit by not being locked down by skyrocketing roster slots, and D3 gets guaranteed revenue every month as opposed to just seeing who is buying hero points, packs, health, etc. I think it is a win-win.

I do NOT think the sub should lead to any special event for members only or whatnot, as that would just divide the community.

Unknown

Not sure I agree with the subscription idea completely, but I'd be open to anything that changes the current "price vs. progress" structure.

IAH, I don't think I fully realized how borked the HP/roster thing was until yesterday. Ironically, it really became evident to me after I won a bunch of HP. I'm currently sitting at just under 3000HP, after buying a slot for my 2* CA.

Guess what? The game actually feels fun again, for the first time in over a year. If I win a new character, I can actually slot him/her. I haven't felt that way in waaay too long. Instead of holding 100+ unopened tokens, throwing away multiple 3* covers, painfully choosing between a 3* that has held 2 covers for a year and a new 3* that could turn out better, I'm simply playing a match 3 game with Marvel heroes, and it feels pretty freaking awesome.

DBC

Unknown

They sell 10packs for 20$ and a roster slot is currently about 8$ for me.

So, you want several slots + 10 pack + added iso/tokens for 10$/month?

I don't see that happening.

Azoic

No, I said a platinum version could have a 10-pack. Yes, they charge that much for things, but most won't pay it. A sub is a constant revenue, and heck, some ppl forget they even have one. I don't know the parameters, but I think it would be a smart move

Jurippe

I paid 700 hp yesterday so I could add Dr. Octopus to my roster.

I was in tears, considering I trashed a fully covered version of him a while back before the big 4* nerf.

Unknown

In all honesty I thought i traveled back in time to the late 90s/early 00s when I saw the title to this thread.... Subscription models are pretty much dead in the water. Star Wars the Old Republic tried it, Elder Scrolls online tried it and both ended up with a free to play model with a year of those games launching. Two of the biggest names in computer gaming tried it and it didn't really work for them. So given those games with a much greater number of things to do than this game, how can you justify a subscription model for this?

Thing is the consumer, that's us, we have so many choices in free to play games, that its insanely hard for any developer/publisher to justify a subscription for anything. Granted we see DLC packs and so called season passes. But even those people are smartening up to those marketing ideas and seeing them as not value for money.

This game in itself is problematic at generating revenue for D3 outside of their roster slots and cover purchases. They even tried that pay to enter competition a few times, but I know from my alliance no one bothered with that... If anything, as unpopular as it might be, the game may start to resort to advertising revenue, but that may be subject to Marvel/Disney's approval. Thus we may in the future see two versions of the game, one with an advertising banner, and one without which would require a fee or subscription to remove. I personally hope I don't see this, but when I look at how D3 can generate more income, I'm scratching my head!

As yeah it will seem like more endless new characters and more slot purchases for a long time... bear in mind they raise the roster cap to something like 250 a while back...Given that, I don't see them breaking away from the model of endless release of new characters and trying to encourage more and more slot purchases!

You must also bear in mind the competitive nature of mobile gaming, you start charging for something that was once free, people will move elsewhere! Even with the advertising example I given above.

DFiPL

skydivearcher wrote:

In all honesty I thought i traveled back in time to the late 90s/early 00s when I saw the title to this thread.... Subscription models are pretty much dead in the water. Star Wars the Old Republic tried it, Elder Scrolls online tried it and both ended up with a free to play model with a year of those games launching. Two of the biggest names in computer gaming tried it and it didn't really work for them. So given those games with a much greater number of things to do than this game, how can you justify a subscription model for this?

The way you make a subscription model work is twofold.

1) Make the benefits tangible, but not essential
2) Make the price attractive

$20/month for a subscription model would raise a little revenue on the margins, depending on how the subscription was structured, but it'd be cannibalistic in that the people who spend the most money on the game right now would be the most likely to instead shift to that subscription.

Something priced about the same as Netflix could work, but again, would depend on the benefits. If you're Demiurge, what you want is something attractive enough that the user doesn't spend any time thinking about what the subscription is costing, but not so attractive that your "whales" transition from their current spending to just buying the subscription. Basically, you'd be trying to monetize some percentage of the large pool of free-to-play users without disrupting other revenue streams.

One possibility: a special subscription token. Inside would be some quantity of Hero Points; or ISO-8; or an assortment of the most recently-released characters, with a guaranteed pull of a cover from one of them (assuming you didn't pull the ISO-8 or Hero Points instead). So, right now, that might mean Vision, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Kamala Khan and Cyclops, say. You get your monthly token, and inside is either one cover from one of those five characters (the assortment would rotate each month to stay current with recent character releases), 4000 ISO, or 700 Hero Points, at a monthly cost of $5. No risk of 2*, no risk of older characters. Just one of the aforementioned items.

Yeah, the $5 proposed subscription point is less than it would cost to purchase any of those things individually, but two reasons for that.

1) You have to make it look attractive enough that people will sign up and not consider the monthly cost afterward. That way you reduce churn. If whatever monthly reward you get from the token is a perceived value relative to what you're paying, you're going to be happy with your subscription.
2) These are newer 3*, not older ones, and so there's a greater likelihood that subscribers don't already have the character rostered. If they don't have the character rostered, they can't even buy covers for one power, let alone all three. By giving subscribers a newer cover, there is now a larger pool of people who are able (not necessarily willing, but that's another matter) to spend Hero Points purchasing covers for the newer character.

Could do something similar at a slightly higher cost for 4*, but I don't know that there are enough desirable 4* right now that people would sign up for that.

That said, I don't know that I'm in favor of a subscription model, but if one were to happen, that's how it would have to look, IMO. It would need to be reasonably inexpensive, and the benefits would have to look like a value relative to the price paid so that the subscription looks like a value and not a pay-to-win money grab.

Taganov

So, yeah, the entire game doesn't have to go on the subscription model; they just offer a subscription option. Month to month could be $10/month, $5/month for a 6 month term. $20 a month for this game, I don't think you're getting any takers.

I'd say something in the realm of a 10 pack + perhaps double ISO rewards for different events throughout the month, etc. would work. Whatever the subscription offers, it's gotta be significantly better than the non-subscription model, which is seriously off anyway.

Aidonis

The monetization of this game has been horrible from the word go. The only decent thing they ever had was you used to get a guaranteed cover of a featured character in a ten pack, but they dumped that. I'd pay $10 a month. 1 free roster slot a month, a sub only event once a month, and some sort of iso bonus.

The fact they've left their pay model broken for so long is completely curious to me.

atomzed

This has been suggested several times by different
people at different times.

One of the thread (which I have proposed) is here:-

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=14464

I think the OP is right in that you need to make it attractive.

One of my proposal is to have a monthly subscription of $5, and you are given unlimited roster slots. That means that if you subscribed to it, your roster slot increased temporarily to the max. Once you stop the subscription, you go back to your original max.

However I can see huge uproar if such a model is released.

slidecage

never will work too many people have put way too much money into the game for it to ever come out

I could see

9.99 a month

500 HP
so much ISO
few toks

not worth it when i can pull around 1800 to 2600 HP a month for free