Oh God! Expiry of fashion is the last thing I want. 
If there was like a donation system, where you could pay directly to the developers with no exchange, for straightforward way to show support and desire for more content⊠would people throw money into it I wonder? Or are we all really unfortunately too dumb to understand anything that doesnât driectly throw goodies in our faces? DX
I mean, Iâd rather throw some RL-money to show my support when I can into a development-well of magic~, despite getting ânothingâ out of it, because Iâd feel comfortable knowing Iâm supporting the game through that⊠but I donât believe most other people wouldnât bother unless they get swayed by something shiny and sugary in return LOL.
But imagine if the process of getting our money was transparent. Like, weâd see on the website how much players are supporting the game with RL-money. You could be anonymous or have your nickname shown on a ladder and have some gimmicky/symbolic rewards/badges for throwing certain amounts of money at the devs xD
Either way, itâs true that the game will have to make money somehow, and it needs make money constantly rather than one-time stuff.
Iâm still leaning towards a pseudo-P2P, where you are essentially paying a monthly subscription for proper gameplay when you want,or play for free with particular drawbacks when you donât feel like taking the game serious (like just hang out in town and chat). This fixes the issue P2P has with people leaving because theyâre cut off from the community for any longer breaks they take.
I donât like the idea of making the âfreeâ-version of the gameplay a terrible experience by gimping it in frustrating ways though. When you do pay, it probably needs to feel like an overall improvement over not paying, but the free-gameplay shouldnât feel like a middle finger in comparison to paid gameplay either, otherwise it just annoys you into leaving instead of making you want to pay now and then.
For example, in some F2P RO servers, a difference between free and paid was a slightly increased exp gain (thatâ was perfectly cool), but another was the death penalty being losing triple as much EXP when playing free (that is a sadistic dick-move and not okay, as it sometimes meant youâd lose several hours of playing, as well as that happening mostly due to lag or DC rather than making a mistake).
Any ideas for differences between free and paid gameplay if the option of monthly payment were added?
Oh⊠since TOS is about class progression and diversity at its core, maybe that can be milked?
For example, when youâre playing free, you cannot progress to next class without either getting a subscription, playing long enough that you get a few free âchangesâ, or paying minor fees for each time etc.
Not sure if that would be okay for players or not.
Another interesting idea there: what about a slow cash-shop-currency-accumulation for just playing the game? (so that whatever is the equivalent of a cash-shop, is also used by free-players from time to time, which does both, not making them feel entirely left out and make them check out what it offers)