BEWARE: Devs have planned a monthly subscription fee since early development

[Pharticus Maximus]

This game has been in development since 2014.

Since the early years the devs stated:

"We are considering either using the traditional subscription based model or a model where the player buys the game and then has the option of purchasing mini-expansions or ‘modules’ after launch. Either way, the game’s world will continue to expand, more content will be added, as well as new features and mechanics." -- They also asked if people would be willing to pay more than $14.99 a month, so this should be told NOW before people buy the game and do not know these fees may come into play later on which can render them unable to play without investing more and more money per month into the game.


Some history of how long this game has been in development:


On January 13, 2014, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen was announced alongside a Kickstarter campaign. The funding goal was set at $800,000, but the campaign raised only $460,657 from 3,157 backers. That failed.

Immediately after the campaign ended, Visionary Realms launched their own website and began crowdfunding independently by selling pledge packages with various perks, such as early character name reservation, in-game cosmetic items, and access to testing phases.

So, Two months after their website launched, in April 2014, Brad McQuaid announced that progress on Pantheon had to be put on hold as the team had to leave to find other sources of income. Any donations during this time went "directly to maintaining the website... and not towards development."

From then on they had various investors and other campaigns to bring in money through companies and also influencers COHHCarnage


So its been in development for over 10 years now with many issues to get the game out or funded enough for a release. Hopefully the devs are upfront about fees that will be there at launch and not collect money and run or collect money and not say its a monthly fee and add that later on to the dismay of the unaware EA playerbase.

[George Lincoln Rizzwell]

İlk olarak Tanist tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Blacktimus Crime tarafından gönderildi:

Right, it's my opinion.

I'm not trying to rip on the game. It looks promising and there seems to be buzz about it, but a $25 sub would turn many off from playing, I think.

Its possible. Not for me or many I know, but then a lot of the people I know who enjoy this type of game were also the ones who played the early MMOs and these days, a 25 buck sub isn't some life breaking expense.

It's not even that it'll will be looked at as a life breaking expense. It will be looked at from the "is it worth it" expense.

And judging by the $40 price they slapped on their pre alpha game, I could easily see them going the mtx route.

[Buried in insanity]

İlk olarak Tanist tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Buried in insanity tarafından gönderildi:

oh yes a sub wont carry them. I know that im in the gaming market i know the costs and prices... a sub cant cut the costs at all. at least not under 20-30 bucks a month

So you develop games, run servers, understand all the costs for development, staff numbers, etc... and you say it "can't" happen?

What game do you develop, manage and run?

We have developed multiple indie titles such as Backrooms Cycle and Keep Up Survival. We also began working on Return Unknown, which was initially planned as a semi-open world MMO with extraction shooter elements. However, we had to scrap the MMO part due to the prohibitive server costs. Even if we charged $20 per month from 15,000 active players, we couldn't sustain the server expenses. Additionally, the development costs and the need to maintain a steady stream of developers would be impossible to cover with a subscription fee under $20. Although creating an MMORPG has always been my dream, our experience has shown us that it is not easily achievable.

[Tanist]

İlk olarak Blacktimus Crime tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Tanist tarafından gönderildi:

Its possible. Not for me or many I know, but then a lot of the people I know who enjoy this type of game were also the ones who played the early MMOs and these days, a 25 buck sub isn't some life breaking expense.

It's not even that it'll will be looked at as a life breaking expense. It will be looked at from the "is it worth it" expense.

And judging by the $40 price they slapped on their pre alpha game, I could easily see them going the mtx route.

When EQ released, it was $40 and $9.89 a month.

You are right, it is an alpha game... not release... the sub would be when it hits release and then it would be like EQ in that respect.

So... you are saying asking the same price of a game that is over 20 years old, and a sub that is still lower than it would be relative to cost increases is not feasible for the people who enjoy this style of game?

I am playing it, it is a lot of fun and I have already ♥♥♥♥♥♥ my $50 pledges worth out of it. If this game reaches its release goals, it will be well worth the initial buy in and I "personally" would say well worth a $25 month sub, though I think it is likely to be in the $15 range.

There are a lot of people who really enjoy playing it , even in its alpha state (it really is quite well done in the 1-20 game that I have seen so far).

Does it need work? More content, balancing, etc...? Yep... So for those on the fence, they can wait till release.

I see a lot of nay sayers out there saying "it's not worth it", but then... I watch their discussion on various game play mechanics and the like... It isn't worth it because this isn't the type of game they like. /shrug

[Lord Bullingdon]

İlk olarak Buried in insanity tarafından gönderildi:

Even if we charged $20 per month from 15,000 active players, we couldn't sustain the server expenses.

$300000 a month wouldn't cover it? Come on, man.

[Tanist]

İlk olarak Buried in insanity tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Tanist tarafından gönderildi:

So you develop games, run servers, understand all the costs for development, staff numbers, etc... and you say it "can't" happen?

What game do you develop, manage and run?

We have developed multiple indie titles such as Backrooms Cycle and Keep Up Survival. We also began working on Return Unknown, which was initially planned as a semi-open world MMO with extraction shooter elements. However, we had to scrap the MMO part due to the prohibitive server costs. Even if we charged $20 per month from 15,000 active players, we couldn't sustain the server expenses. Additionally, the development costs and the need to maintain a steady stream of developers would be impossible to cover with a subscription fee under $20. Although creating an MMORPG has always been my dream, our experience has shown us that it is not easily achievable.

Why are the costs so prohibitive?

How can a private server handle 1k logins on simple donations, but 15k is somehow unobtainable with a 20 bucks sub?

Any ideas?

[Tanist]

İlk olarak Lord Bullingdon tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Buried in insanity tarafından gönderildi:

Even if we charged $20 per month from 15,000 active players, we couldn't sustain the server expenses.

$300000 a month wouldn't cover it? Come on, man.

Yeah, not buying it... it doesn't add up.

[Lord Bullingdon]

İlk olarak Tanist tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Lord Bullingdon tarafından gönderildi:

$300000 a month wouldn't cover it? Come on, man.

Yeah, not buying it... it doesn't add up.

Those are some extremely expensive servers

[Tanist]

İlk olarak Lord Bullingdon tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Tanist tarafından gönderildi:

Yeah, not buying it... it doesn't add up.

Those are some extremely expensive servers

Yeah, I am thinking someone is getting ripped off. lol

[George Lincoln Rizzwell]

İlk olarak Tanist tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Blacktimus Crime tarafından gönderildi:

It's not even that it'll will be looked at as a life breaking expense. It will be looked at from the "is it worth it" expense.

And judging by the $40 price they slapped on their pre alpha game, I could easily see them going the mtx route.

When EQ released, it was $40 and $9.89 a month.

You are right, it is an alpha game... not release... the sub would be when it hits release and then it would be like EQ in that respect.

So... you are saying asking the same price of a game that is over 20 years old, and a sub that is still lower than it would be relative to cost increases is not feasible for the people who enjoy this style of game?

I am playing it, it is a lot of fun and I have already ♥♥♥♥♥♥ my $50 pledges worth out of it. If this game reaches its release goals, it will be well worth the initial buy in and I "personally" would say well worth a $25 month sub, though I think it is likely to be in the $15 range.

There are a lot of people who really enjoy playing it , even in its alpha state (it really is quite well done in the 1-20 game that I have seen so far).

Does it need work? More content, balancing, etc...? Yep... So for those on the fence, they can wait till release.

I see a lot of nay sayers out there saying "it's not worth it", but then... I watch their discussion on various game play mechanics and the like... It isn't worth it because this isn't the type of game they like. /shrug

Yeah, I'm in that "wait for more content" boat.

I didn't know the history of this game until I did a deep dive last night. It's had a very crazy past. The dev guy Brad (rip) story was very interesting as well. Seems like that guy had a lot of haters.

Anyway, I honestly think an mtx model done right (like PoE) would probably be a lot more beneficial for them. I get that there's lots of oldheads around here that scoff at that, but I guarantee it would bring more people around. Even a $10 sub with optional mtx stuff would be very beneficial for them.

[zeeb]

İlk olarak Artois-VisionaryRealms tarafından gönderildi:

We haven't decided on a monetization model for when the game goes into full release yet. However, there isn't any subscription during early access.

If you're to be undecided on the monetization model. Then I guess we're to be undecided on a purchase.

[Jenkz]

How else do you expect developers to get paid and improve the game without a subscription model? What world do you live in that is all "free"? Give me a ticket to this imaginary place so I can come.

/facepalm

[justanotherhuman]

İlk olarak Jenkz tarafından gönderildi:

How else do you expect developers to get paid and improve the game without a subscription model? What world do you live in that is all "free"? Give me a ticket to this imaginary place so I can come.

/facepalm

to be fair its not there fault they were brain washed by the pubic school system to think that socialism is this wonderful heaven

[Cpt.Meho]

İlk olarak Buried in insanity tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Tanist tarafından gönderildi:

So you develop games, run servers, understand all the costs for development, staff numbers, etc... and you say it "can't" happen?

What game do you develop, manage and run?

We have developed multiple indie titles such as Backrooms Cycle and Keep Up Survival. We also began working on Return Unknown, which was initially planned as a semi-open world MMO with extraction shooter elements. However, we had to scrap the MMO part due to the prohibitive server costs. Even if we charged $20 per month from 15,000 active players, we couldn't sustain the server expenses. Additionally, the development costs and the need to maintain a steady stream of developers would be impossible to cover with a subscription fee under $20. Although creating an MMORPG has always been my dream, our experience has shown us that it is not easily achievable.

I worked on BNET, our servers didn't even cost that much. 20,000 people could fit on a blade and the blade 10 years ago $100,000 per-blade for the hardware out the door. The maintenance wasn't that bad on the server blades, and they ran on CentOS and used apache configs, so all open source.

Today the hardware is much better and cheaper. You can even find used stuff that works great, you just need to spin up the storage array.

I don't know who did your server hardware/maintainence quotes, but they're shafting you super hard. You're probably trying to do something like use AWS for game servers, which laughable, don't to that.

[Wizard_of_Nozs]

A sub fee will keep most of the turds out hopefully. Let us enjoy our game.

[Rager]

Reason I am not getting this game because sub fee could be in it. Guild Wars 2 set the standard. You are not better than that game.