Let's talk about the price of PRO

Yes, you would keep your PRO time. It’s not 100% comparable, but people with supporter packages kept their PRO time last universe reset. It’s tied to your account, not your company, which doesn’t get reset.

Last Universe was under First Access.

During First Access, only a one time purchase of a support package was required to get Pro.
Once the subscription model went live (which was at the same time as Early Access) the time is ticking and will not be reset.

add subscription-only packages to the Premium page since this thread started?

Those are the prices already when this discussion started. 5.99 is only viable for veterans. For a new one, it is not a realistic option.

Early game you have nothing to do after you set up your operation, waiting to produce, wait to sell. Pay 8 euros will do almost nothing, I can not play more anyway. Local markets and contracts can help reduce fuel costs, on the best is an “8 euro for 10% game speed boost”.

3 euros is cheap enough that you don’t care to pay, you don’t even need free to play. 8 euros is enough to buy some nice stuff in Steam a play as much as you want while waiting for things to get done.

The best plan for newcome is to play for free until you hit your limits (fleets, base, etc), and have sure that you stick to the game. Pay for 12 months.

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Op and sisso highlighted my precise feeling, the pricing model is misplaced and you aren’t going to get a dime from players that would otherwise pay or they’ll pay for 1month. Market is efficient whether you like it or not and this is the type of game that attract people that think/strategize I bet most of us invest in the stock market irl and virtually have multi billion isk and quit because it’s a chore at some point.

The game is a version of eve and try to focus on the economic aspect and less waste of time flying around(instead with a timer), but is severely mispriced because the content is no where near worthwhile. The players themselves are the content, charging exorbitant rate aren’t going to help player base expand and therefore part of the ‘content’

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I like that you mentioned the players are part of the content. I totally agree with that statement. The universe seems a bit empty right now with so few players, it’s like a small cult following.

The universe depends on many people to set up an economy, the more people there are, the faster tech progresses, and the healthier the market will be.

I feel like in a lot of cases, if the complicated UI doesn’t scare someone off, the price model will.

We need more players!

I did some back of the envelope calculations a few weeks back that showed that this game is a net loss based on a few assumptions:

  1. that SNF is representative of the wider playerbase - possibly flawed because we’re more active and recruit from a pool of people with ‘ratings’ ergo, have paid at some point
  2. that CX listings is representative of ‘active’ players - those who are active are more likely willing to wait for an order to fulfill than buying out immediately.

Based on these assumptions, I estimated that the Devs revenue is ~2000EUR/month from this title, barely enough to pay one of their salaries, let alone the three of them.

Conclusion, this game is heavily subsidised by the Devs main title, Airline Sim, and thus, as a passion project we shouldn’t be too eager to disincentivise them further.

If you were playing First-Access, you’ll know that the number of players in that universe was more than sufficient to fully explore that galaxy, as well as the tech tree; there’re roughly 5x that amount of players now.

Known problem, which is part of the reason of the ‘base limit’ introduced with first access - micromanagement of all these aspects was burning players out.

I think the vast majority of players who get past the first week of build->produce->sell->restock will see the benefit of BASIC over PRO and sub at least once to cross that threshold. One option here would be a purchase option for BASIC only (like 5 EUR). I’m currently BASIC, and working with some of my PRO corpmates i have no trouble in maximising profit.

if they reduced the price to $3.33/month (USD)

Looking at my above numbers, say they halved the current monthlies, how much an increase in subscription would you expect? I estimate a ~60% subscription rate of people who have CX listings; if the subscription was halved, that would have to go up to 120% subscription rate (yes, I fully understand the absurdity there), and there will always be a sizeable population of people unable/unwilling to pay, without more aggressive restrictions on f2p players.

I’m very happy with the current system; you can still make a profit playing F2P; it’s a lower profit sure because you don’t benefit from the additional monetisation of your ships; with BASIC you have more ability to make profit, being able to accept but not post ads, but not being able to list them does have some impact; and it doesn’t necessarily increase your profit margin, just gives you additional methods.

Because none of these increase your margin, none are ‘must haves’ and that is a sizeable difference from other F2P games; for example Wargaming’s titles with insane power creep, and units that always make a loss in battle; mobile games with ‘wait timers;’ Destiny 2 with its lootbox store that is a core part of the gameplay loop.

None of the other monetisation strategies suggested in this, or other threads pass the test of preventing margin disparity. I do not think that it is beneficial for the game to convert can pay to must pay, and I do not think any of the arguments made by relatively new players have suitable context. One particular change that very significantly affected the F2P/P2W balance is the moving of CXs to orbits, rather than on a planet, making shipping necessary, and the Devs addressed this by making source and/or destination CX ads postable by all on the CX’s LM.

Obviously, the devs have much better statistics on how many players are paying, and retention of F2P vs Subscribers.

And last but not least, inb4 “you’re just committing a sunk cost fallacy.” I bought the cheapest supporter package, and am more than happy to continue playing with BASIC. I agree that 8 EUR/month is more than i’m willing to pay, (mostly because disposable income), so I don’t :man_shrugging:

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What I meant by “we need more players” is: if we had more players, the membership costs could be lower. With as few players as we have it seems to me like the devs basically have to overcharge for membership.

I’m just hoping that the price goes down in the future.

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Absolutely agree with you. I would definitely pay for this game if it had a reasonable price. But I find the current prices are simply unfair. So I stick with trial. Lost revenue after all.

My first comment when I started the game was this is exceptionally slow to start. I play(ed) other strategy games that take months, Illyriad, Outscape etc. Yet even in those the pace at the very beginning was about double what it is here. When I sold off all my fuel I doubled capacity but I am not sure the devs intended that.

This creates an obvious barrier to entry, and agreeing with the above posts, has meant less people will reach a place to give the devs any money in the first place. As we’ve a few captalists here, I’m sure you can see the issue with that. Barriers to entry, or in this case barriers to people giving you money, is not a wise design choice.

So I can only conclude what the devs are aiming for with their pricing is people who have already been here months and want to expand their base cap. Also those who feel like contributing to the game over feeling compelled to. Honestly the features given for the sub fee seem a bit light to me. Also this page PRO License :: Prosperous Universe Wiki should be easily accessible from the ingame client, on the leftside bar for example, removing another possible barrier to entry.

Now i’m not saying gimp trial accounts further, i’m saying make a few design choices now that add features to the non trial accounts. Again not things which hinder anyone’s ability to compete but which instead give opportunities for non trial accounts to complete extended projects or goals. I posted a city suggestion but you can expand that idea to any number of things which are in the category of fun rather than function.

I would like to see the costs of subscription or PRO license come down, possibly back to a one time fee for indefinite access. Then the devs should monetize the game in a way that caters to big spenders, but does not result in pay to win. There is already some features of the game that could be monetized like this, such as:

  • Name a planet
  • Name a system

Currently supporter packages can be bought that give this ability, but it is a one time only thing. For reasonable prices I think more planets would get named, the universe would gain character and the devs would get money. Of course this has a side effect where the amount of money that can be made is limited by the number of useful worlds and systems, but hopefully this will also incentivize the devs to make the universe more interesting rather than the poorly generated universe with 95% useless worlds we have now.

Ideally the devs could find other cosmetic items in game that would make the game more appealing and provide additional sources of revenue. Further items that actually affect gameplay could be monetized on the principle of “one person pays, everyone benefits”. This could include possibilities such as:

  • Prospecting - Some worlds have undiscovered resources. Send a team of geologists to survey the planet and locate additional mineral deposits.
  • Exploration - Some sectors are unrevealed. Charter an exploration ship from one of the factions to explore that sector and chart the jump lanes, stars and planets in that sector. Unexplored new sectors on the map would indicate that there is abundance of certain types of resources in that sector - for example: a sector could have various modifiers that would be known prior to exploration such as fertile worlds, hydrogen/helium(3) rich, mineral rich, etc. that would affect the spawning of resources in those systems. In this way sectors becomes specialized as well, to encourage trade between certain areas that have different abundance of resources.
  • Commodity Exchanges - Purchase a license to build a new commodity exchange in a sector that does not currently have one.
  • Various Shared Infrastructure - Space stations, space elevators, COGC, Planetary Administration, jump gates, or anything else that all players benefit from.

These items could all still require some in game resources and time to build or develop as well, just the licenses to do these tasks that affect the development of the universe come out of the players pockets. The players who have the financial flexibility to spend and the desire to help guide the development and crafting of the universe will have the ability to do so, and everyone else gets to play for free/cheap.

So you would somehow like to solve the problem of game balance that plagues mobile gaming? And you want it to be done here, for basically free? Hmmm… :sweat_smile:

Having read through your post, it has some interesting ideas… but I don’t think I would be personally on board for most of them. The game is currently ideal with its separation of game affect and monetary affect. You cannot influence the universe in a mechanically relevant way with real life money with the exception of local market and FX participation.

I would argue that not allowing aged trial accounts to participate in the LM system is an error, especially if the taxes they pay on planet go towards the upkeep of such a system… and the same thing is kind of true about the FX.

Enabling convenience (recurring production orders) is a path that makes sense.

The game already has influence of real life money in numerous ways, the local market is a huge game changer. Also anyone can pay 649 euros to design a commodity, name a planet and system, etc. Giving players the ability to craft the universe by supporting the devs would give us two benefits:

  1. The devs can monetize the game better and remove subscription model which most players agree is overpriced and annoyed with, and go back to full LM/pro access with a reasonable one time purchase.
  2. The universe can be crafted by the players to be more interesting and grow organically. Right now the universe is static, boring, and most people agree 99% of worlds are randomly generated trash. We can fix that by introducing a business model of allowing players to support the devs to help design the universe.

This is not pay to win, it’s pay to make the game interesting. This is a win win for all players and devs, because there is a clear consensus that the vast majority of systems and worlds in the current universe are boring and pointless. Let us fix that and save the game at the same time.

Not through the asquission of a Pro license…

This notwithstanding (as I already mentioned it).

Yes, this is true, but it is deliberately (or accidentally) taking what I said out of context. We were discussing how to monetize the game without affecting its mechanical balance. To be explicit, there is not a way to gain an advantage except through the LM / FX by using real currency.

And these are things that the entire game then get. By their design, not pay-to-win. Also a limited number of these exist.

No live service game with perpetual maintenance should ever have a one-time purchase. ArenaNet managed to do this because the sheer amount of cosmetics and expansions available for Guild Wars is literally insane. Additionally, GW eventually went the way of the “PRO” subscription. I won’t force an interpretation of that down your throat.

What is interesting to me may not be interesting to you. The developers have to balance their time vs. interests of players vs. not going broke.

So… just like a real Universe? Interesting.

Did it ever occur to you that some of the trash planets are that way for future growth? Even if you don’t use them like that, some planets are good to orbit strictly to take advantage of alignments. Everything has a purpose.

From my time in software development I can tell you that most end-users and customers can’t adequately explain what they want, and even if they could they end up describing something that they actually don’t want. While it sounds good, the end result of oligarchical design is probably horrendous.

Also, this already exists… it’s called supporter packages (which you already pointed out, so I’m not sure why you’re trying to make another thing) and PRO license support. Either you believe in the vision and the product, or you don’t. To me, it’s very cut and dry.

The game is interesting. I have models predicting the price and volume of Carbon in Moria. I’m working on figuring out whether or not building an ECA is too big of a business risk. I’m making digital friendships through the medium of business.

The game can be better, but I don’t think the pricing of PRO is what’s getting in the way of that.

And the pricing of Pro isn’t in the list.

If you’re this passionate, go learn to code and apply to join the team.

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Done some thinking on this and I think a “Pay what you want” structure might be worth investigating.

First let’s look at the features of BASIC (ie. Lapsed subs):

  • Company Rating
    • Accept Ads posted on LMs

And the features of PRO:

  • Post ads on LM
  • Recurring Prod Orders
  • Uncapped HQ level ^1
  • Better Price Bands for CX (although possible removed/unimplemented)
  • Foreign Exchange
  • Build/fly more than 2 ships ^2

^1,2 Unsure how these work once PRO lapses to BASIC; do your additional bases above 5 get disabled? What about ships being built/in-flight?

What could work then, is users choose which features to enable, and then offer an amount they’d be willing to pay for them. Say I want to go on holiday for a month or so, i could just pay for recurring orders, instead of the full package of 7EUR/month.

Thus, a solution here where subscribers can opt to buy a pack of ‘tokens’ that enable a feature for a month, and mix/match which features they want as and when they need them, with the recurring subscription being cheaper if you want all features. Or perhaps increase the resolution down to a week. This would enable people to buy in for the most important features they want, although may come with transaction fees.

2 EUR for each monthly token or maybe 49 cents for weekly ones, purchases in bundles of 10 or so, would provide an affordable but limited option, while still promoting monthly subs as a cheaper alternative

It’s ironic that you say this because I used to do game development for about 10 years. I left the industry for corporate software a few years back for easier hours and better money, and I am not so young anymore.

I don’t know if they are taking volunteers, and I wouldn’t mind lending a hand here and there in my spare time as a hobby, but I have a full time job that is more important and I think that Simulogics is trying to run a business here.

I feel that. I will never forget my Capstone teacher telling us “You will never write more profitable software than internal tooling.”

Hurt me to my soul.