EA looking into Battlefield subscription service
EA Games' Patrick Sonderlund says the company is "looking at" a subscription model, but isn't ready to talk about specific plans.
EA has been angling to be on equal footing with Activision's Call of Duty franchise, and the success of Call of Duty Elite has given the company a whole new reason to smolder with jealousy. EA Games' Patrick Sonderlund has taken note of Elite's success, and says the company is looking into something similar.
"I think it's fair to say we're looking at [a subscription model]," Sonderlund told Venture Beat. "Like all other companies, we're looking at how we can maximize our investment in this and get the most out of our investment and get more people playing this product. That may take us to different places, but we're not really talking about where that is yet."
He says that Battlefield's Battlelog features are already providing some similar services. "We have people in Stockholm and North America and other parts of the world that are in this every single hour of every single day," he said. "365 days a year. We have an operations team at DICE to look at telemetry data. How are people playing the game, how can we improve the experience? Are they having problems? Are servers down? Are they up? All that stuff."
All the same, Sonderlund isn't challenging Call of Duty to a cage-match. "Call of Duty is a shooter, but it's a different shooter. And I think they have a market; we have a market. I'm fine with what I'm doing. I'm going to continue innovating and doing as best I can with my team. Hopefully that's going to lead us to more units [sold] and more happy customers."
Sonderlund isn't the first EA executive to tip the company's hand on a subscription model. Peter Moore recently said the company may take a model similar to Elite, or even aim to do something "one step ahead." Meanwhile, Activision is preparing Call of Duty Elite 2.0, so this year's shooter rivalry might be over the accompanying services more than the shooters themselves.
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replySteve Watts posted a new article, EA looking into Battlefield subscription service.
EA Games' Patrick Sonderlund says the company is "looking at" a subscription model, but isn't ready to talk about specific plans.-
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To be honest they actually seem to really try to be a Cod copy with small non vehicle maps, and even makes some things worse than Cod (unlocks). For me it was to much so I gave up at level 20'ish and this was probably my last battlefield game, which makes me sad in a way because there is so much potential, they have an absolute stellar engine with the best sound, yet they add shit like unlocks and small cod-like meat grind maps. Shit I could love this game if it wasn't their greed/stupidity rubbed all over it.
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Unlocks have been in the Battlefield franchise since BF2, I don't see why its a problem with you only now. That said I put less hours into BF3 than I did for BC2 and unlocked everything I wanted faster. As for the maps, unless you're playing conquest metro or TDM/DM none of the maps are as small as any CoD map. If you stopped on only 20 you're missing out.
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it has always been a problem with me, however the mechanics in BF3 are way worse than before, inane stupid shit like essential vehicle counter measures etc. should never ever be an unlock. Not to mention the amount of time you have to spend playing to unlock essential gear (mostly this refers to vehicle stuff, but also stuff like smoke, IR etc.) if mindbogglingly high, insane.
The way its designed (particularly on the xbox where you have no 'training' servers or servers with particular rotations/settings) its damn near impossible to play and learn if you are a lower level with few unlocks, its just turns to a stupid spam fest where you spend more time looking at the re spawn screen than playing. That's not BF, that's Cod level shit.
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A business is evaluating multiple different business models story at 11
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right... but they have to mention it now so they can plant the seeds in your mind... and seeing money on the table is a good thing when your a business, you can never fault a company for wanting to make more money. you can only fault a company on customer satisfaction and lack of innovation.
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if its anything like their pay to win bf heroes garbage, they can eat a bag of dicks.
i already despise their weapon grinding scheme and balancing issues with weapons like the famas in regular bf3 that penalized regular players and overall fragmentation of the community with every stupid fucking booster pack/dlc/addon they did in every battlefield so far.
i will commend them that this one time they finally got a working server browser by not using the pile of shit gamespy but like with every dice game there as still enough things they need to patch.
i look forward how they manage to ruin this game in grand ea fashion by trying to nickel and dime the shit out of a minority of the community who is willing to pay for things like dogtags (which is probably an deserving idiot tax. valve has shown that there is money in hats so as long as they don't introduce overpowered weapons which they undoubtedly will...).
karkand was ok because it was maps we knew, and it was widely available through the limited edition preorder so fragmentations wasnt too bad. look at the dlc shit around bioware and mass effect and you will get an idea where we are heading.
also the need to add a working backup system for the game. i had to redownload the whole game because i wanted to copy the files from my ssd to my hd. even using regedit and diverse tweak it didnt work.-
battlefield heroes isnt really pay to win. it just seems that way because you're pretty much invincible when you've maxed your ability levels. the better guns are only marginally better and in the wrong hands they still get wtfpwned by more experienced players. the game was lots of fun
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i recall their general manager doing a presentation called "pay to win" at gdc which in tl;dr fashion cooked down to "look at our success motherfuckers, we thought we were going to get axe'D but look at all the money we made by nickel and dimeing the shit out of people. our success gives us right".
basically the whole concept is based around insane people spending ungodly amounts of money on the game with everything else build around them is meant to enable them spending insane sums.
there was an article/interview on farmville/zyngas business model that was basically build like pushing dope and using really shady methods of enabling addiction and peer pressure to sell their garbage.
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i think their forums went batshit insane when they finally made the switch in selling gameplay advantages.
i really want tribes acend to succeed and i had some fun with the beta but there are some undeniable advantages in certain unlocked weapons or perks that will take a very long time to unlock despite being really significant advantages in the hand of someone who knows what the fuck especially if dedicated classes and specializations are a necessity to get a good team running.
it really depends on how they price the game after the beta and i want to play it but if unlocking everything costs more than buying a triple a game i will either pass or unlock only a single class with the absolute minimum perks that i need to play path finder as a dedicated flag capper which will inevitably lead to cases where you have lots guys that have done the same and cant really help the team when a specific class with a specific loadout is needed.
this shit works in deathmatch but it leads to some really ugly matches in capture the flag.
some shit like having to unlock flares or the defibrillator in bf3 is similarly stupid.-
ya but with Battlefield heroes you could buy anything and everything with money you earned in game. however itonly lasted a few days. or you could buy it permanently with real money. I think the backlash was due to the factt hat you'd have to grind for several hours to purchase an item that would only last a short time. since I was in alpha/beta I had accumulated a lot fo the free credits so I never ran low
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TF2 is now F2P, play? Stock weapons can kill, grinding can get you upgrades. Money buys you things, but nothing buys you OP weapons/skills/etc.
A subscription service is different than F2P and needs to be treated as such. What would the draw be? What's the setting? Am I hopping into random servers, or is there a weekly theme? There is a lot at play for the subscription model, this isn't simply unlocking everything in BF3.
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lol
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You get your full investment by providing a great service. Not squeezing your customers to death. It has been proven already. Why do you keep doing this EA? Oh wait you really are this fucking stupid
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psst, we don't count anymore. it's the investors they care about. As long as they make money for the investors we could eat shit.
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I think its only advanced stat tracking and access to every DLC once released. But what do I know, I'm a PC.
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It's pre-paying for maps with some incentives that aren't worth much.
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Here's a hypothetical situation:
Activision creates a "Gold Membership" version of CoD. Basically anyone with a Gold membership can join servers exclusively populated with other Gold players. The fee for this service is I don't know $10 I'm not putting much thought into this part.
The point is: would this "service" reduce the amount of shittards on CoD servers? Would it be anything like the original goal of the SA $5 subscription fee? In that it's supposed to make people treat things with a little more gravity? -
Fix the multiplayer bugs, glitches, hacks/cheats, and balance issues then maybe we can talk. The way you have handled the series post recent doesn't leave much hope. You tried hard to show a distinction between Battlelog and Elite's fees.
You have to make the game fun for people to want to play to begining with before you even start thinking about adding a subscription level. I don't know about other people but I have kind of lost a bit of interest in playing BF3 online because of all the linger issues. Absolutely love the series as a whole but the problems are too much. -
If it meant that BF on consoles had constant updates and wasn't shackled to a yearly disc release, I think it'd be a smart move, assuming the price is right.
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Jesus fucking christ chucklefucks, have any of you actually read the article? The quote is pretty much almost identical to "like any business we're always looking at all possibilities"
It is no more committal than that. This is a non-story. This is not news. It's worse than nothing!!-
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It's true! It's rumor mongering, which is literally worse than nothing because it spreads misinformation, the antithesis of knowledge. >:[
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"We have people in Stockholm and North America and other parts of the world that are in this every single hour of every single day," he said. "365 days a year. We have an operations team at DICE to look at telemetry data. How are people playing the game, how can we improve the experience? Are they having problems? Are servers down? Are they up? All that stuff."
REALLY? If so the people doing this job must be 1 step above retarded because they don't seem to be getting the messages! -
"success of Call of Duty Elite"
HAHAHA COD Elite is the biggest money grab in gaming history and everyone who bought it is kicking themselves. Is COD elite even working now now?
If BF series goes to Pay 2 Play ill stick with BF3. I dont mind buying DLC's when they are worth it but this is too far. -
It's funny to hear this. If i remember correctly back at E3 last year they kinda ripped the Elite subscription service on stage. saying battlelog is free and does the same thing. Honestly, I thought Elite was a Bust. I bought the game but would never buy a sub. service just for maps. EA go F yourself! I only rented BF3 because of the online pass bullshit.
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I haven't bought BF3 because of the stupid Karkland DLC -- I didn't preorder and wasn't willing to pay $75 to get the full game -- and now they're talking about continuing the fleecing with the next version?
No thanks -- I don't play it enough for it to buy DLC much less subscribe to this bullshit.
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