The future of PL ... long term recommendations; my most important post for this year

[WhoIsThis]

The psychological effect of subscription will still be there, obviously, in order to sell that optional subscription, at all, it must have some sort of leverage compared to purchasing platinum items one by one (product bundling to summarize your idea), otherwise, nobody would even touch that. People will start to think that STS is forcing their players into subscribing. However you put it, there is no such thing as a hybrid pay-to-play and free game, the moment you put that option, it will be classified as pay-to-play. That's how the industry works. Name one game where it's classified as hybrid pay-to-play and subscription. None. When somebody checks out a "new" game they haven't played before unlike yourself, they will only see that "subscription" option and automatically classify it as such. I don't think it's a good business move for STS.

Regardless of drop rate, they can still abuse the item drops from PVP kills by coercing. I did not say that losing items is the problem, it's the fact that you can repeatedly kill a fellow player with consent and get loots regardless if they lose that particular item or not. It's a proven flaw already that's happening now. Anyway, you're just suggesting so I won't really bother too much about it since you didn't really claim it would be the best direction. Nice effort for the write-up though. Thanks. XD

You're kidding right? Coercion to PvP? Nobody is compelled to PvP - in fact the PvE chances remain better (due to the availability of elixirs). The incentive to PvP does not exist in that respect. If drop rates in PvP > PvE, then yes, there could be. But I did not advocate for such a system. And if anybody is trying to "coerce" anybody else into PvPing (or for that matter doing anything), that player ought to be reported. How is it already happening? In PvP, there are no rewards. There is no "coercion" to PvP happening right now either. Everybody who PvPs does so voluntarily - PvPing is very much a labor of love right now because there are no rewards.

I did not advocate for losing items for a very good reason - in fact I'd consider quitting if they did.

Finally, there is an incentive to subscribe yes, but so long as 100% of the content is free, there should not be an obligation. I make it very clear that there needs to be no obligation in my original post, which I think you need to re-read and my response earlier. In most other MMOs, you must pay for access - what I am advocating is to keep the full game accessible for non-platinum and to make an option to subscribe, but a subscription that gives no new content and nothing that could not be purchased with platinum should the player so desire. I suppose in that respect, it is an unconventional idea. But, the volume of platinum sales suggests that there are plenty of players that are willing to put a lot of money into this game. How the subscription is billed is key.