Mahws, on 19 June 2012 - 06:00 PM, said:
A good argument, but from my experience it runs in the other direction.
Think of it this way, I'm sitting at the purchase screen, looking at a month of premium. That's $10, but what if my schedule gets busy again? What if I don't have the time to play? It's not like I can't play withouth buying it, I'll just get a bit less XP/Money for my matches. It creates an incentive for people not to hit that buy button when they otherwise would because people simply don't like the uncertainty. It's easier to log in and play a few matches and have a day cut off your premium than it is to buy premium thinking you won't use most of it, money you've already spent is valued a lot less than money you've yet to spend.
Daily, or three day boosts seem like a good counter to this on the surface, but smaller repeat purchases are a major turn-off for most players, in percieved value for money but primarily in percieved value for time spent. When you find out that you've got enough unexpected free time to get a few matches in after work for the first time in a busy week you don't want to spend time buying premium, you want to get straight in and play, make the most of that rare and valuable time.
The best way to look at this proposal is this: People want to be able to pre-buy premium time. Give me the options to buy 30 days of premium or a pack of 30 one day premium boosts that I can use when I want and there's not question of which of the two I'd choose, even if it cost more.
Will this method lose them income from the frequent user market? Debatable, I'd argue that the kinds of people who consistently buy premium boosts play frequently enough that there'd be little difference between them. But more importantly I'd argue that the vast majority of players who are unwilling to drop money on subscriptions would be far more willing to buy packs. Use it or lose it subscription may be the industry standard for MMO's, but for a free to play game, where we're paying for a bonus rather than access, is a completely different product. Die-hard players will always spend a lot, but the purchasing power of all those less frequent players is a market that will remain untapped if you don't tailor your products to offer options that are attractive from where they stand.
TL;DR: Think of it as buying a pack of 30 one day subscriptions and consider how much more attractive that would be to the casual (usually non-purchasing) portion of a F2P games population than Use-It-Or-Lose it monthly or multiple spur-of-the-moment 1 day purchases.
I want to quote this post for truth.
It's not so much a matter of going 'Oh I don't have $10', for me there's a mental roadblock that exists in the form of simply going through the effort of buying something online.
Traditionally speaking, the 1/2/3/7-day 'passes' are worse value than a 30-day pack. I commented earlier that these pay structures and what works best are really unexplored territory, and I doubt anyone could really say what works best.
But from my point of view, I'm more likely to want to buy a 30-day bundle. One, this means I'm not going to have to dig out my card and fight with it on a weekly basis. Secondly, if I know I'm not going to be using much of that 30-day boost, I'm more likely to not buy anything at all. It's much more convenient to have the boost available whenever I log in, whenever that may be, than to ask me to dig out the 'ol card because I planned to have a weekend splurge session, which ultimately costs me $2, when I know in my head that the 30-day deal is more convenient and better value.
So what it comes down to is that I don't understand how the smaller sectioned boost days would be equally appealing. It's more work on my behalf, it costs me more money, and I know this. I'm more likely to buy nothing at all.
Others may disagree, but that's how I see it.
Hopefully a PGI rep can answer this question for me: If I ask, could I have my boost period suspended? This topic arose because of the 90-day for Legendary which I plan on purchasing whenever I stop feeling lazy, which, if I play in August, means I'm losing a bit of value on because I won't have September available.
A per-day activation is obviously the best setup from a consumer standpoint, but since it doesn't sound like that is an option that's being explored right now, is it possible to have my boost status put on hold?
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