The better game would allow for the creation of these skins in game with nothing but in game items and allow for the sale of your really cool in game crafted with in game skinned items. To other people, in game.
I can agree with that, but we (I assume you and most everyone else here, as well) came from the origins of MMOs, where you paid a sub every month and everything was inclusive to that.
That's not the current gaming mentality. We have to look at MMOs differently because they
are different than "traditional" games (single-player like
Skyrim or even multi-player like
Chivalry). There is a permanence to them that has to be accounted for. Sure, you have games like
League and
StarCraft with huge communities and fanfare, but that isn't necessarily the same for every multi-player game with battles that take place, end, and reset. There's a dedication that MMOs demand, even for the "filthy casul".
With so many MMOs out nowadays, you're competing with an oversaturated market. Of course, you could argue that your game is different, that it isn't a
WoW clone or something. And maybe you even market it really well, and don't fuck up the business model. But here is something that you really can't directly impact:
community. Players have been on other games for
years, playing with the same group of people for
years. Yeah, they also have
years of accomplishments they don't want to leave behind, but if another game is better, I think most people would give up those things for a better experience, to build anew. What they have a harder time doing is leaving their friends, their
online family, behind and being alone again after three, five, even
ten or more years.
So right off the bat, you have a hoop of fire to jump through getting players. That's okay, you can still make a great MMO without millions of subs. But mass begets mass, and population is critical, particularly for MMOs. They aren't "massively multi-player" because you're running into the same 64 people over and over. So how do you get people to play your game, to effectively leave behind years of work and friendships (or even rivalries), to start all over again as a newbie instead of a professional, and do it on a massive scale, all at once?
Free to play. No upfront costs. No subs. This brings in the population you need to show others, "Hey, look, we're populated, too! We have people, too! You can make friends here, too!" They might just be testing the game, but it's still another player online adding to the living, breathing world you're trying to create. Those are still potential "friends" you can make that will anchor you to this game and keep you from returning to your old pastures an hour and a half later. Paying a small fee or even buying the game outright isn't the hurdle for most people - as I mentioned before, it's legacy and community elsewhere anchoring people down - but it's still a hurdle, likely in the top three. Further still is time commitment. MMOs require dedication to achieve anything of meaning, to "keep up" in the permanent, never-offline game world.
So with people anchored to other communities with years of acquiring their wealth and swag, a pay wall in the form of new subs or just a one-time buy, plus the commitment to make it all worthwhile, the traditional means of funding an MMO is simply a non-option. That leads to microtransactions. I think the MMO genre is in a rut, a transitional phase. We're seeing it with games like
Star Citizen, and we've seen other games try in the past, but most of us haven't heard of them until it's too late because of marketing or funding or both.
Here are some videos y'all might appreciate:
