Charge playtime instead of days?
 

Doesn't look like it has been brought up before, but I have an idea.

What if Graal, instead of charging for days, charge playtime. This way if you go on vacation or sometime similar, you don't loose 7-20 days. This way have a certain amount of hours you can be online and be charged for playtime instead of days. What do you guys think? Personally I think its better for the players. What do you think?

I'm pretty sure they want to actually make money.

Yea, thats the thing I noticed about it, it gains advantages to players but not graal.

That would be a nice idea, but the price would be double what it is now.

Look at it this way... it's only benefiting people who don't play often. If your plan went into action:

1) Graal would lose money
or
2) People that play A LOT, would have to pay even more

I think it's a great idea o_o

Ideas is good yes. But theres too many flaws in it....

Bad idea. People who play an average amount and up would be screwed.

I kind of thought about this before, too..
Overall, I think it's a bad idea. However, it would be nice if there could be an option to where you could choose to buy like, a certain number of hours of online time for GK, for those people who don't play much at all.

If they didnt play much at all.. why would they want to buy hours for it anyway?

It also doesn't address what you do about things like forums and the other features you get with VIP.

so they could play when they want to?

damn, so sign me up!

One hour of GK please, and the full 60 minutes this time!

Stefan: "Ok, that'll be $600"

You see my point?

i didn't say it was a good idea. I just answered your question.

The current model is unlimited play between your subscription time.

I wouldn't look at it so much as days, but more so months.

You would also run into an issue with an hourly rate. If you get kicked out and your character is left in the game, it would drain from your time pool. This drain would result in you requesting a refund for the time as it wasn't 'your fault.'

I also agree that the hourly rate model would end up making more money for the developers. While an hourly rate is convenient to casual players, the market for online roleplaying games is the hardcore player. The hourly rate would be less convenient to them, and much more expensive. Why pay a premium for this game when there's so many more to play these days?

Honestly, I think the current model is better all around. With an hourly or time block based model you are limited on how long and when you can play. With the current system, you can play at any time, and for as long as you want during your paid period. I have absolutely no problems with that.

Well there should be an option, do you think anyone plays graal 24 hours a day o.O?, Well if they did that's just sad.. And if this come through (this idea) then they can calm down on graal and get a life:p

How?

Say you play 5 hours a day. You wouldn't get "charged" 24 hours every day, just 5 hours.

I assume that if this were ever made available, you would not be able to buy say 3 months of time. But with the current setup, you could stay on for 24 hours every day of that month, but since you could only probably buy 300 hours or so at once with your system, they people who are on average or above average amounts of time would get screwed AS WELL as unixmad and stefan.

Let's look at the math, shall we?

Using the combination packages provided on the subscription page. A new player could spend 44 dollars and get the combined gold/vip for 12 months.

So $44.00 = 12 months.

Since we know that 12 months includes 365 days, let's divide the amount that we get by how many days we get to play.

$44.00/ 365 days = about 12 cents per day. (do the math yourself, it's a long decimal number, since we're dealing with money I rounded up).

So let's get the amount you spend per hour.

$.12 / 24 hours = 1 cent per hour. (rounded up of course)

So if we go with that subscription plan, you are basicly spending 1 cent per hour.

6 months of Gold + Classic = $.00625/hour
12 months of Gold + Classic = $.0041666666~/hour
12 Months of Gold + Classic + VIP = $.005/hour

Now you see what the actual costs are per hour from what you are currently paying. After you've thought on that, consider how much money that would need to be charged per hour to create a profit. You would not be paying $.005 $.006 or $.004 per hour under that type of pricing model. Probably not even 12 cents per hour either.

This isn't a cell phone plan guys, you're actually getting a pretty awesome deal.

Idiot! Now unixmad will highten the prizes...

Volumatic sales bring down the cost of a product.

Say that stefan and unixmad's hosting cost is 200 euros a month, and 100 players each have a gold account costing them 45 to 40 euros a year. That is 4000 a year, whcih is around 300 euros a month for them, 100 euros profit.

Now lets say their hosting costs are ALOT more, say 1000 euros a month, and lets say there are 4000 users with gold or vip accounts. They need to have at least a classic account to have a vip, which means theres at the very least 40 euros per person, which is 160,000 a year, which is around 13,333 euros a month, minus stefan and unixmad's salaries, probably around 2 to 3 k a month, it still leaves them with around 7000 euros profit.

this is a very rough esitmate, and i doubt that they make that much money, but with the playerworld hosting monies added on top of that, stefan and unixmad are making ALOT of money, and a plan such as the one suggested would not kill their business.


[edit]

according to graal.us there are around 650 players logging on on average.

650 players with gold or vip coming to 44 dollars per person, 44 * 650 = 28600 a year.

28600 / 12 months = 2383 a month roughly. It may not be enough to power their tidy salaries, but it is quite enough to support a business.

Hmm, this would be a good way for graal to go under. x-x

It's possible to make money in a fair, reasonable way.

Think of it this way...
1) Pay for days and prices stay the same
2) Pay for play time and prices rise
It would be the same either way

If this theory were ever to be executed Graal as we know it would be no more.

Not to mention, it brings up conflicts if/when they actually need to raise the price for a subscription. People would stockpile time, etc.

It is also rather taxing towards the players. Players will most likely wind up getting mad and wildly impatient.

My response to this idea:

LIEK TEH NU

Awful idea. Graal is already a bargain as it is. I'd question how well bugs are dealt with, but I'll still play anyways.

If you charged by time online, it would contradict what Graal (I hope) is trying to do. Graal is trying to get people to play more. The easiest way to grow popularity is to have a solid player base (preferably a solid and growing player base). If you started charging by playing time, then the players who play more often would stop playing as often because then they'd have to pay more. Players that don't play often would be better supported, but you wouldn't want to support players that don't play often because they're not part of the main player base. Promoting players to play more is the key. Most of Graal's advertising comes from the people who play a lot, and newbies are generally more likely to play when there are more people online (hence UN's popularity).

It's really complicated, but trust me when I say that it wouldn't be good for either the players or Cyberjouers.

I have a good idea:
Let's get those people with classic subscriptions to stop leeching off for free. They play. They complain. They harass. They're nothing but trouble. At least make them pay a little bit since not ALL of them are so bad I guess :-/
By little bit I don't mean "Give me $1 and you can play my game FOREVER!!! RAAAAR!!!".... x.x I mean periodical payment like we do
And then fix current problems like GK....and G2k1

Well it's a great idea but from the evidence what has been posted it's obvious that they will not go forth on this :(

Erm... I'd rather pay annually...

I'm pretty sure Unixmad wouldn't fall for...

1 month = 744 hours (31 days * 24 hours)

(To think the people with 2K hours... That's more then 2 months on without stop!)

Considering a player plays 5 hours a day, he can spend his 744 hours in 149 days... Which is roughly 4 months.

Now, why the hell would they want you to expect to buy a 3 month subscription (turned into hours) for the same price, when the amount of hours within the three months would be prolonged to over a year? -- This way, the 3 month span will turn into the 12 month cost fee... You don't want that. The end.

No 1 said anything about the forums bit I guess if this does happen you won't be allowed on the forums? -Which is good I guess 3 quaters of graal don't post anyways...:p

But you must also take the servers into account, anyways I'm planning to get one anyways so I need that yearly vip, :D.

Along those lines, you can have people pay if they want to play on GK, private servers, or classic, sort of like VIP but if you would want to play on Gold server, you could do an upgrade.

You could have the people with time on their account post in forum, and classics play on classic servers.

But then I guess they would have to cut the time in half to be able to afford a switch like this.

I don't know where you're getting this five hours a day.

I see some people on the entire time I play, and at many times that can be up to 8 hours on weekdays. Weekends, it goes well past 12 hours at times (I do a lot of computer work in other windows :D)

The hourly rate will cost players more money. I also agree that it would hurt the playerbase more than improve it. The MMO market is filled with the monthly pay-to-play model. Graal should be no different in this matter, besides maybe a lower monthly rate than those other games.

I can understand the concerns of the casual gamer. The pay by monthly plan isn't the best in the world. It best suits all the players across the board, however, while a pay by hour plan would only benefit a minority.

Perhaps an optional plan added would be good, but for now I would greatly prefer the current way payment and subscription is handled rather than this proposed idea.

There is no possible way that I'd pay again for Classic access... I even had a hard time figuring out whether or not I'd pay for the one time. In my opinion, GK is no good. The game play is just to confusing to understand right away. On the other hand, there's classic. Classic has less confusing gameplay, but is loaded with bugs that nobody cares to fix. If they made classic subscriptions pay then I'd just go searching for another online game (I'd probably go back to playing Continuum more often). I'm sure that at least 50% of everybody playing Classic servers would do the same, and that some of them would probably even sue because of the lifetime access guarantee thing.

I'm embarrassed by saying this but o-well
I was on graal for so long (Can't remember exact time) but my computer hadn't had a shut down in quite a fair bit of time.. I was playing graal and the moniter blew up :P. Don't know why it happed but I was mad because I couldn't save the level I made... :(

ERm.. I took in consideration that the people HAD a life.

And, I was just saying that the people who do spend 10 hours a day, would have to pay a whole year for half, seeing that the standard I described was based on the price-range was for people who play 5 hours a day.

lol, funny story, lol