EPTFree to Play Starcraft II - Page 17
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Csong
Canada396 Posts
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ex_cutd10
United States40 Posts
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Veldril
Thailand1817 Posts
For me, I think having free access to some custom maps in multiplayer or skirmish against AI is good, then you can pay for either full access to the Campaign mode or the full ladder system should be a good first step if they want to make SC2 free to play. | ||
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Amui
Canada10567 Posts
Customs, team matchmaking(unranked - keeps track of MMR, but no way to track games played or statistics in client) games. This is where you get your player base from. If you want the player base to grow this is where it's going to come from, not from 1v1, regardless of what other people may think. Map Maker(No release functionality) Campaign Demo Levels. In client advertising for events, streams etc. Big and obnoxious. Paid accounts can minimize this. Paid(whether it be like $20 or like TF2 where you make a micro transaction and get a "premium" account) 1v1 Matchmaking(ranked and unranked) Team ranked matchmaking Campaign(full) Map Maker(Release functionality) Microtransactions Primarily skins. I don't think people will pay for custom games, regardless of how entertaining they are. Modifications should be limited primarily to low count units, workers, and buildings Portrait, Decal trading: Maybe you have like 100 unlockable portraits/decals that drop randomly like TF2 hats, and you can trade those around. The current decals definitely need to be more noticeable though. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9377 Posts
On September 24 2012 07:33 FlilFlam wrote: I think the most important factor to look at is simply the sheer amount of people who would start playing sc2, especially if the future expansions were promised as free in terms of multiplayer. Once SC2 streams and tournaments start getting bigger numbers, tournaments will make more money through advertisements. Blizzard makes money off any tournament with a prize pool larger than 5000 dollars, so as long as the tournament benefits in addition to the paid content, like the single player campaign, outweigh the loss of an initial sales price for all players it should be a good move. If player numbers grow, in-game advertising becomes more lucrative along with the tournaments. So you have to ask yourself, Blizzard, if the initial 50 million or so in gross sales (wild guess) is better to have than a highly improved long term investment through creating a larger community. I personally believe that such a hit to Blizzards business model in terms of releasing games is a bad idea given the current growth of esports. We're not there yet. I think E-sports (sc2 streams in specific) events would need get consistently more than 100k viewers in order to make tournaments profitable enough that Blizzard could decide to stop asking for a purchase price and instead give away multiplayer in the hopes of making them even more profitable. In reality i don't really have much info or data to go by so there are just my impressions and feelings, so we'll see. So by how much exactly does blizzard benefit with price pools larger than 5k? | ||
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stfouri
Finland272 Posts
I could allready see the hate between posters that have been here since it all started and the people who only found out about this site when SC2 came out. Now imagine if it would go f2p. Imagine these forums :D. | ||
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Roarer
Hong Kong124 Posts
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Talin
Montenegro10532 Posts
On September 24 2012 09:36 emythrel wrote: generally with blizz expansions they drop the price of the original and previous expansions so in total you don't pay that much more. Like you can buy WoW with everything up to WotLK for slightly more than WoW vanilla cost at release. WoL will drop in price with release of HotS, so you will probably be paying about 30-50% more for both than you would have spent just for WoL. atm sc2 is $60 it will go down to $40 and HotS will be $30-40 if people are willing to drop $60 on the latest CoD game every 18 months, they should be willing to drop an extra $40 every 3 years for SC2 I'm aware of the price drop. The problem, however, isn't only for people who need to pay $40 every 3 years, it's for people who need to pay $80 to get into Starcraft 2 when the expansions are out - and you can bet anything you want that there won't be many people willing to pay that much to get into an rts game that's only getting older. Even the original $60 price was very steep for Starcraft 2, I was pretty surprised at the time that they would go for the full AAA price tag. There's no way you can compare an RTS to games like CoD or any MMO titles really and expect it to sell the same at the same prices. It's just not going to happen. The target audiences are different and the gameplay itself doesn't really hook people in (quite the contrary). The fact Blizzard are even considering the f2p solution means that they're aware that sales are going to be problematic to say the least. | ||
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blade55555
United States17423 Posts
On September 24 2012 16:27 Talin wrote: I'm aware of the price drop. The problem, however, isn't only for people who need to pay $40 every 3 years, it's for people who need to pay $80 to get into Starcraft 2 when the expansions are out - and you can bet anything you want that there won't be many people willing to pay that much to get into an rts game that's only getting older. Even the original $60 price was very steep for Starcraft 2, I was pretty surprised at the time that they would go for the full AAA price tag. There's no way you can compare an RTS to games like CoD or any MMO titles really and expect it to sell the same at the same prices. It's just not going to happen. The target audiences are different and the gameplay itself doesn't really hook people in (quite the contrary). The fact Blizzard are even considering the f2p solution means that they're aware that sales are going to be problematic to say the least. You do know that sc2 sold 3 million copies in a month which is very good for RTS's. Also every game is 60$ now of days that's made by a known publisher. Doesn't matter the genre or anything. There are plenty of non shooter/mmo's that are 60$ so it's not surprising that they priced all their games the same as everyone else. | ||
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FinBenton
Finland870 Posts
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Talin
Montenegro10532 Posts
On September 24 2012 16:37 blade55555 wrote: You do know that sc2 sold 3 million copies in a month which is very good for RTS's. Also every game is 60$ now of days that's made by a known publisher. Doesn't matter the genre or anything. There are plenty of non shooter/mmo's that are 60$ so it's not surprising that they priced all their games the same as everyone else. And then it sold only 4.5 overall (if the link I'm reading are correct, but I doubt they are off by much). And that's the original Starcraft 2, that had a lot of hype and expectations behind it, so plus the Blizzard marketing they got away with a decent but not stunning number of sales. Expansions, however, will be a different story. Every known publisher certainly doesn't price all their games at $60, and even when they do, the discounts hit very early and very often nowadays. While many games still get priced higher than they should, it's probably smarter for an RTS game to veer away from the AAA-land. There's only so many games that people will pay for at that price, and too much competition to deal with. | ||
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Juggernaut477
United States379 Posts
On September 24 2012 16:53 FinBenton wrote: Im fine with this as long it is just new ladder maps, unit skins and such, after all I have paid 50e for hundreds of hours of game play and they still making more maps and shit, I feel like I should pay more. I feel like blizzard should pay me to play on their maps. | ||
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NexCa
Germany954 Posts
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Negius
Netherlands290 Posts
That way you can make SC2 more known for a larger audience, but if you paid for the full version, you could gain access to a premium laddering system. I think a very good option for blizzard to expand their income, is to offer the possibility to buy another character name on the same battle.net account (for smurfing or switching races) for around $10-15. | ||
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Defrag
Poland414 Posts
Seriously, there are so many ways to make it possible, you could just lock the number of games per day, make it impossible to chat, use clan tags etc. Obviously they would have to implement a lot of new feautres, but as long as they don't change anything in the game, I would be as thrilled as ever to see them come. | ||
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theBlues
El Salvador638 Posts
Id still buy the full game. | ||
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AnalThermometer
Vatican City State334 Posts
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Godwrath
Spain10126 Posts
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Fluid
Canada136 Posts
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Conut
Canada1026 Posts
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