MrPiggi

I'm not twisting any words. You said what you said, and I explained why it was wrong. Whether you meant to say something else is another point.

I think this is a great idea! Sadly, I see this as something that someone will create as an AddOn to the game rather than a feature the devs provide since it is an "extra" kind of thing.

You are contradicting yourself here; you are saying the looting system means overall, people will have to work for it and it's the opposite of the quick gratification of just buying the stuff you need. It is the opposite - you are getting the quick gratification of having a lucky drop, or you are grinding and gathering the money required to buy a good. I can almost guarantee that if there is a subscription fee, there will be no premium shop. The developers will already have a steady stream of income and will not need to waste their time creating premium items to attract peoples wallets.

But it's not. They advance in the game faster but that does not equate to them "winning" anything, because they will be on equal footing to everyone else at whatever level they reach. I don't like the idea of premium or special items dropping as loot. Why have that system? The whole point of a premium system is to provide the devs a way to make money, making special items and just dropping them at random is worse than having them available in a shop since it'll just mean some people get a rare advantage over others, out of nothing but pure luck. It might be interesting to start a poll on the matter of the financial model of the game. I would definitely be interested to see the numbers of forum users as to which they prefer (F2P, Microtransactions, Sub-based, one price based etc.)

Well, let's pretend the game has a balanced player base of players at endgame (2nd and 1st rates) and midgame. I'm not asking it in relation to balance of the game (we're presuming it will be balanced), but in relation to the ability for a new player to pay for a "premium" ship (which, remember, is accessible to those who don't spend money either) and getting a "boost" to his start. Do people generally consider this a form of pay to win? Or another case of pay to progress?

This! Exactly this. Whilst we're on the topic, I'm curious to know - do you consider items that can be bought using ingame currency and real money to be pay to win? Say, a "Premium" ship that you can get instantly by buying it but is also available via ingame currency?

Didn't earn what? The exp? Yes, you did. It's not a box of 15,000 XP, instantly granted that you can buy 100 times to get to max level. It's a booster, usually 50%. Meaning you still have to go out into the world and do the quests and the grind, just less of it. And it still does not equate to "winning" anything. You are level 20 fighting another level 20 - you have absolutely no advantage over him. You are level 40 fighting another level 40 - again, you have absolutely no advantage over him.

Then I presume you never spend money on games or micro-transactions, because only people who don't spend money would assert that that is pay to win. It's not pay to win in any shape or form. It's paying to progress, which is very different. And yeah, their pricing strategy was stupidly retarded. They could have had a lot more players and probably a lot more money had they not charged a fortune.

exp/money are not pay to win features...they let people progress faster if they don't have a great amount of time to invest. That's not paying to win. That's paying to progress faster. Paying to win is if you put up "Premium" ships for sale that you can only get with real money and they are stronger then usual ships, for example. And $50 is a little absurd. Maybe in it's later, more complete life - but at launch it should definitely not be using a high price. Planetary Annihilation did that (charging at £40 retail, $60 or $70?) and that put off a looooot of people.

It's shifting away because it's easier to attract a mass audience using the F2P model. That doesn't mean games aren't working with it. WoW and EVE are still going strong, ESO so far as I'm aware is doing alright and Wildstar is doing well but it's only just launched. I'm definitely willing to pay a subscription fee to play a realistic age of sail MMORPG, ESPECIALLY since there is nothing else out there. I still think the GW2 model is the best for a game of this type, but I'm just asserting that subscription isn't a dead option. And because Lemonater kept dismissing it without really saying why other than it's not good.

You've still offered no arguments really. Saying their model works only because they are "big" doesn't show much, Blizzard was well sized from the start but EVE wasn't. Saying a subscription model won't work because you don't think it will or because it's a small company is null. And also, to address your "Eve pays for itself" theory - no, it doesn't. You may have bought PLEX off of another player, but that player bought that PLEX from EVE. So someone has paid* EVE for your month, it just isn't out of your own pocket. It's a very successful system and one I completely back - Wildstar has also introduced it and if NA adopted a subscription based model I'd love for them to look into something similar.

And this is based on what? EVE, which is the only other comparable niche-driven market, is still going incredibly strong with it's player base and subscription base. AND it has a significantly higher monthly fee than the "standard" or expected fee. Saying that a subscription fee will keep the player base small as an argument against it is weak. Not that I'm saying this is the direction the game should take, just pointing out that your argument does not conform.

Why are people so adverse to the idea of premium currency? I think it's a great idea to be able for people to "sell" premium currency ingame for the standard currency (if there were a premium market for cosmetics/extras/exp boosts). There are people who have money to spend but not time, so they buy the extra bonuses and sell premium "gems" on the market to get the gold they don't have time to farm. The other people who don't have money but have more time, can sell their gold for these gems and still have access to the same "premium" stuff the rich kids are using. I'm not against a subscription - I would happily pay one for such a unique game; however, we are very, very far from the point of completion of this game. No one would pay a subscription fee for a WoT-esque game of just battles until it becomes an MMO (something we're still not close to). Until then, I would like to see a WoT-esque game whilst they work their way up to an MMO where we just use matchmaking/servers to go into battles. I'm not sure how it currently works, but having a line of ships to grind down in the meantime would give a sense of progression for players whilst we wait for the good stuff. Also - we have to remember, the market for this kind of game is not as large as we'd like. It's a niche, so the price structure has to be carefully thought out.

Yeah just to put in my two cents, I wouldn't want a scenario where everything was pitch black and I'd need to be throwing out flares to see what's going on. Day/Night I think is good, but nighttime should be at the very least moon-lit so people have an idea of whats going on and where ships are. It'll be harder to identify them, meaning you'll have to get a lot closer to see what ship you're coming up against or who it belongs to, but you should still be able to duel it without visual difficulty once you get to a certain distance.