Sasquatch MacNamara
Circle of Huskarl
Minmatar Republic
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Posted - 2012.08.22 10:07:00 -
[1] - Quote
My general opinion on this has already been covered; voip is expensive to run, so it makes sense that it is a bit limited. Most games don't allow you to talk outside of the battle/staging area anyway, so this is just paying for an added feature.
BUT, it is important to realize that if DUST is part of EVE, and CCP wants to foster the same level of communication and metagaming that has made their world as much a classic (and for the same reasons) as the board game Diplomacy, communications are going to have to be either free, or at approximate cost of bandwidth.
That said, most who get serious about DUST will do it the same way EVE players do- multi-boxing. For corporation and Alliance leaders, most of your time is spent doing admin and diplomacy work outside of the game, so you're going to be sitting next to a computer anyway. A CCP game is not for the faint of heart. Horrible things will be said of you and all you love. To play the metagame, you're going to have to be the sort of dedicated **** willing to have a PC sitting next to your console. The same way most EVE players have multiple screens and a Hi-Sec miner running on their laptop.
This is a console game though, and most console gamers just want to do the same thing we all do; sit down, grab a beer, and play a game. They just like the extra convenience of not having to worry about all the stuff that comes with PC gaming. This convenience can easily be monetized, and I think CCP is taking a very unusual strategy of targeting casual gamers rather than the hard core "whales" on which most F2P devs focus their monetization efforts.
In short, I think this means people who just play DUST on the weekends or on occasion will wind up paying for the convenience of treating it like a normal console game. These players won't be regular, and so they will be paying for Aurum they don't really use: they might use comms, they might not. Either way, they're buying Aurum because they think they might need it, and CCP makes ends meet.
If so, I think lowering the cost of the UVT to just 1Aurum for the duration of the beta test would be a huge error, as it will give false feedback about the desirability of this solution to comms as opposed to simply running a laptop, tablet, or smartphone (all can be used for VOIP) for your metagaming needs.
Final conclusion, pricing should be such that a player can purchase the smallest possible ammount of Aurum, get the one month UVT, and still have some left over for other things. A regular player should be able to buy one with straight ISK on the open market just like PLEX. Power gamers and guys just stopping by can support the community with their wallets. The rest of us can just play the game. |