Let's talk about the price of PRO

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I’ve been playing this game for a few days now. I’m really enjoying it. It’s just complicated enough to hold my interest while also giving a distinct sense of progression, not just for the individual, but for the server. Which is a unique concept. I also REALLY like that there are no microtransactions and it’s not strictly a pay to win game. That said there are certain advantages to having a pro membership, and if you’re serious about the game I believe the features in PRO are almost necessary after a certain point of progression.

The issue that I’ve run into is that I want to support the Developers, but when I look at the price of PRO ($10/month when converted to USD), I just can’t justify it. For me, at that price, this would have to be my main game. But at the pace of this game, it’s just not possible to spend most or all of my free time on it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want the pace to increase, I like it the way it is. It’s just slow enough for your decisions to really matter.

Because the pace is so slow, I wouldn’t feel good about spending more than 1/3rd of the current membership price on the game. I’ve talked to my IRL friend that I introduced to this game, and he agrees. If the price for pro was cheaper, I’d even purchase a support tier, because I really do want to support the game devs. But when the price of pro doesn’t seem fair to me, I’m not willing to spend any more than I have to on the game.

I understand that at the end of the day the Devs need to make money. The player-base right now is small, and that makes it harder. Maybe the only way they can make money right now is by charging $10/month for pro.

I don’t have the data on that so I can only speak from my personal perspective, and that is: If pro were $3.33/month I’d buy it every month and I’d buy a support tier (less than $50 USD but probably not the cheapest one either) because I’d feel good about the price of pro and I’d want to support the devs more.

As it stands right now, my plan is to spend $10 for pro one month, and then just be a basic member for the rest of my playtime because I feel the price for pro is way too much for the enjoyment value and playtime I get out of this game (mostly the playtime), and I don’t feel good about supporting the devs when they’re charging more than I believe the game is worth.

Let me know what you guys think, at what price would you be a member for as long as you play the game.

And if a Dev is reading this: Are there plans to reduce the price of pro in the future?

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As someone that just started a couple of days, I couldn’t agree more. You expend a few minutes per day, there is not much you can do after that, just wait for things to happens. It is hard to justify the price.

Funny you say 1/3. Because my plan was exactly to pay only if I play more than 2 months, and then back to the Basic account until I few I need to pro again.

Edit:

Maybe is just missing a “beginner” tier, access to everything but still with some restrictions (10 bases? 10 fleets? etc)

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I think that was the idea behind the ‘basic’ business license. Which is free for life after paying for pro once. A bit of an intermediate tier. Though I think what you’re suggesting might make sense, though with a slightly different application.

I think it’s going to take a very long time before I’m coming close to the 5 bases restriction of trial. It’s also going to be a long time before I need to use more than two ships. So maybe an additional tier (like you’re suggesting) that gives you access to most pro features but doesn’t increase your base cap or fleet cap? I’d go for that.

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How exactly do you expect this game to fund itself if they made the PRO membership basically free? It’s not like there’s a huge playerbase that can each pay $3 per month and cover the cost of even one dev.

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I think that was the idea behind the ‘basic’ business license

@ForumGhost Not sure. From the wiki looks like basic is exactly like Trial in addition to accepting local market ads.

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I think the problem we’re running into here is the old one of ‘Supporter Access’ and a game cost or subscription model. Perhaps the most comical of which occurred during the development of the game Planetary Annihilation.

For those of you who do not know what I’m talking about, the short version is that game went up on Kickstarter with a 100 GBP main support tier, which included early access to the game. Shortly after they put the game up on Steam but in order to not feel they’d screwed-over their Kickstarter supporters, they set the price of the game at 100 GBP. Obviously this didn’t go down so well - the game got nicknamed ‘Walletary Annihilation’ and was a real flop anyway - if you’re going to make an RTS that pits itself against a game like Supreme Commander - you’d better have a good reason not to charge more than your competition’s price, which was 7.99 GBP. Within weeks the game was available on Humble Bundle for 0.50 GBP - which is what I paid (and that was still overpriced).

So why am I going on about some old RTS game? Here’s the rub - Prosperous Universe was sold to me on Social Media as a game that had a Economic model that would appeal to EVE Online players. I used to play EVE Online fanatically and if I wanted to do so right now I could pick up my old account for at most 12.99 GBP / month. Obviously there’s no Early Access stuff mixed in there but the other edge of that sword is the game is proven. The markets are settled and if you want to do something that’ll eat your time between transactions, sure. In fact, the market side of things is pretty much free-to-play anyway with the limits being placed on the other activities (which you can still do, just with less ships etc.).

By comparison Prosperous Universe, which has sold itself as being ‘like EVE’ has been set with a subscription cost that never goes below 9.85 GBP / month (unless you buy the top support package which would take over 18 years of gameplay to be worthwhile on subs alone compared to the cheapest per-month sub). That’s just over 75% of the cost of a game that’ll keep you busy constantly for years. Until that percentage comes down (I’m not going to suggest what too, but removing the involvement of Early Access would help) people will either play for free as I do, or get fed-up playing for free and leave the game - which if I’m honest would be a crying shame because it is a good game.

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Overall the discussion is a bit simpler. The company revenue that is the important part is # players * $$$.

The argument is that reducing the price will bring more players, as some amount of players are not willing to pay the current price.
More players bring other benefits and running cost.

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How exactly do you expect this game to fund itself if they made the PRO membership basically free? It’s not like there’s a huge playerbase that can each pay $3 per month and cover the cost of even one dev.

@CapitanIncognito Firstly, what I’m suggesting is not ‘basically free’ but rather a 66% reduction in price. That number is not based on any financials, but rather what I believe the game is worth to me.

I can’t speak about data that I don’t have, so I won’t.

All I can say is that personally, I spend more money when I don’t feel ripped off, and as it stands, I feel like Pro is a rip-off. As I said, if they reduced the price to $3.33/month (USD) I’d buy a support tier, because I really do enjoy this game.

As a side note, game development is not all profit up-front. This is not the only game made by Simulogics. They also made an Airline Sim. Since this is their second game, they should be able to operate at a loss until the player base picks up. And given the current player base, I suspect they are already operating a loss right now.

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Absolutely, and since I don’t have access to any of that data, all I can do is say what the game is worth to me, ask others to do the same, and hope that something comes of it.

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You can play EVE-online for 10.95 (one-year subscription) and do everything you can in this game and much more, and then like a 1000 times more sophisticated.

Or is this an unfair comparison?

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The real issue is if you think the additional subscribers would offset the lower cost. I’m skeptical.

edit: Apparently can’t multi-quote.

[quote=“SeeGee, post:10, topic:3179, full:true”]
You can play EVE-online for 10.95 (one-year subscription) and do everything you can in this game and much more, and then like a 1000 times more sophisticated.

Or is this an unfair comparison?[/quote]

EVE has a much larger playerbase to support it and can therefore hire more devs at that price. A small game is going to struggle to pay even one full time dev’s salary if people don’t give them money.

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I agree with your opinion. To me, the highest price I can justify is 5€/month, which is half the current price.
I understand the dilemma of small developers. When you have a competitor whose product is mature, you either follow its pricing and lose money, or price higher and lose players. Still, the players’ money does not come out of nowhere.

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Nobody is saying here that don’t want to pay, but it is the opposite, free players want to pay.

The talk about salary is irrelevant. You can not open a video stream nowadays, put half of the content of Netflix at the same price and say that people should pay you because you are small and you have a family. This is not a quick start page, we are not here to donate for support. But evaluate if subscription service worthy of comparing the alternatives. In our personal opinion, it is too expensive if when you get started.

There are many ways to tackle it if they decided to do so. Like a new tier of players, or more simple: A 50% discount for the first 3 months pack subscription, it incentive new players to “taste” the game, progress to the early boring part without few wasting money, and have the hard decision after 3 months to go back to basic or not.

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I just wanna say, I did buy pro for this month. But unless the price drops I’m not spending another penny on this game because at the current price I just can’t justify it. I’ll be a basic member for the rest of my playtime, and that’s fine.

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But it’s not half the content on Netflix. It’s different content, and there’s lots of streaming services that do just that like HBO, Disney, etc. It’s not like there’s competition where you can go play the same game, and no EVE isn’t the same. To do what you’re doing here, you’d have to spend a lot of time manually ordering your ship around. There’s nothing exciting about watching your ship 6 times because you wanted to deliver a shipment of goods and didn’t want to get ganked while flying on auto-pilot. I want to be a space CEO, not a space trucker.

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@CapitanIncognito We are getting out of topic here, but we played a different EVE :slight_smile: Trade, market, buy orders, deliver contracts, PI, research, and industry. You do all of it remotely without getting out of your home station.

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I actually disagree with this. It’s a lot more like EVE than perhaps you’d admit. There’s players who just sit in the markets trading, there’s players who make stuff and ship it there to trade but it’s up to them whether they fly their ship or pay Red Frog or PushX to ship it for them, which is very much like buying fuel in this game - not just in terms of cost but also time. One other thing I forgot to mention in my original comparison to EVE is that whilst the terms of service for this game limit you to one account - an EVE subscription grants you three in game characters who can all work toward one goal.

Ok, I admit - it’s not like Netflix but tbh - I haven’t a clue where that comparison started but it’s clearly a poor one. The real points being addressed here are:

  1. Is the (specifically subscription) cost too high?
  2. Have the Devs dropped a clanger by mixing/bundling their sub packages with Early Access ones.
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Yeah, and then you have to go pick up the PI stuff :frowning:

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Ok so not sure if it is me missing them or did they add subscription-only packages to the Premium page since this thread started? Now you too can have a Pro account for as little as EUR 5.99 / month.

That’s better, or sorry I missed that if it has been there all along. I know some people might still say it’s too much (like OP who wants to pay not more that equivalent of EUR 2.75 / month for this) but it is a lot better than subbing via Early Access and untangles that problem. If indeed the Devs have added that after reading this or a similar post then it’s good to see a positive response to it.

One thing I would still ask however, does a Pro account run out of time right now if purchased? To clarify what I mean in full by this question… if I bought any Pro sub and the game were to say, pop out of Early Access in two month’s time, would I find that I have two month’s less Pro subscription remaining whilst the game server has been reset and I have lost all progress?

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This got added with EA (early 2021)

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These packs have been available for a long time.