Bare with me here. As I'm sure you all know, I am fully on board with the P2P plan. I feel the game is totally worth investing in.

Some people feel the same way, but they make a valid point. What if I can only play once or twice a week? How can I justify the price?

I had the same reaction most of you P2P people had. It's cheap, so shut up. But then I thought if I knew I could really only play twice a week, it would be nice to not have to pay the same as a person who plays a few hours everyday. So.....

Daily payment plan: 75 cents a day. You sign up, just like you would a monthly plan or multiple monthly plan.

So, you click daily plan and you buy so many days. They can buy in blocks of 10 days at a time. To be on this plan, you have to buy one 10 day block a month.

If they charge 75 cents a day, and you played everyday in a 30 day month, you would pay $22.50. If you only played 20 days, $15 bucks. If you only played 10 days, $7.50.

So, I have no problem with this at all, because as we all know, a normal one month plan is 50 cents a day.

I plan to sign up 6 months or a year at a time, for about 10.99/month and play all I want. (My guess at the discount)

So my daily cost at 10.99 a month is only 36 cents a day.

So, only the people who really can not play much would do this deal. Otherwise, they are just crazy.

My policy is, options are almost always a good thing. What do you guys think?

Please keep in mind, this takes nothing away from paying customers. It will increase player volume. I don't see a downside, but feel free to point it out to me.

all I can see happening is people playing 2 days a month and zenimax loosing money

I think you should be able to only get 1 free daypass per ip address so people can see wether they want to get serious about playing or if they don't like it and want a different mmo.

having the ability to purchase 24 hr eso game time will lead to allowing people to become comfortable with this way of playing which leads to loss of income for zenimax.

For me, I plan on playing every day, so this plan would cost me extra, though if it's made *optional* I'm on board.

Of course it is optional.

Did you read the whole post? Please explain how they can lose money.

yes I read the post, and then re-read it again after I made my comment like you asked us to.

they will loose money because people are no longer bound to get serious and agree to a set monthly payment.

with your idea they become accustomed to play once in a while and its nothing serious and also leads to people not really wanting to come back cause they might not have 75 cents in the bank cause maybe they are broke this week.

it also leads to people who might be very comfortable to pay only for weekend use while their off work .. and sadly they get a few extra days off or a holiday and sit and cant play cause they already spent all they had last week not knowing they would be off work THIS week with time on their hands to play.

over all it just isn't a serious means for payment.

if your serious, and you like this game, then pay the proper monthly fee!

Yeah losing money really isn't what's happening, what would be happening is that they are only getting paid for the live service, rather than getting paid for access TO the live service.

What you proposed is essentially a pay-as-you-go model. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepaid_mobile_phone

I voted yes from a consumer stand-point, but when you start going down this road from a business standpoint you get into sticky territory. This is basically like how AOL first provided internet access: hourly. You bought hours from them and when you used up all those hours (could be a week or could be a year) you bought some more to continue having access.

It would be a nice option for the consumer, but they'd likely have to jack up the monthly sub to compensate for the "average MMO player" who only plays something like 6-8 days a month.

It's the same way a great deal of digital services work, like cable tv and phone lines. Cable TV usually doesn't allow pay-as-you-go methods because they would end up making less money.

But why stop at days and why not go by hours or minutes played in this case? And what constitutes a day? If I log in for 5 minutes to check my bank or my auctions does that mean I have to pay for a full day now?

Yes please.

I absolutly adore Elder Scrolls, and begrudgingly play some mmo's for the good gems. I'll probably play the absolutle heck out of it for 1-3 months. But then I might only wanna play once a week or so because of my job/school and because I like shooters, racers, and Armored Core as well. So I'd hate to have to make a choice of throwing $15 in the sink every month, or not have the chance of playing at all even if for a lovely afternoon exploring daggerfall.

It would be nice, but also I'm not complaining because I'll happily pay $15 to play Elder Scrolls with my nerdy friends.

I think people who normally play 2 days a week can use this system. They might now buy the game, where they would not normally.

I think people who slow down to 2 days a week are probably no longer having as much fun, or want to login once in a while, waiting for the next big expansion, but does not want to completely stop playing.

If ESO sells 10 days a month they still make about 7.50 a month. So, they make just a few dollars less than a guy who pays for 6 months at a time. 10.99 a month.

As for the day, yes, it is based on the 24 hour cycle. So, midnight to midnight at your location. They could even be nice and give an hour leeway grace period at both ends, so it's 11pm to 1 am. (26 hours)

Well, then as I said, I'm on board...however, this again, could be another double edged sword. It's very possible that this could lose them profits, but it's also possible that it could gain. The company would really need to know that they have enough customers locked in for this policy to be profitable.

Yes, I would expect ZOS to deeply consider this a risk. However, my feeling is it will bring in more customers than shrink existing customers.

My thought is, even if everyone switched to this plan, and had to buy one ten day block a month to make this work, they would still have 7.50 a person which is still a nice chuck of income over B2P.

The answer is ALWAYs C

Anyway no on my end for this, because i dont believe it would supply a secure income to the company, it wont guarantee them the numbers they need to make a decision on what upgrades to make to the game every month.

If it is optional sure, why the heck not, i would like to see even a "Freeze account for 2 weeks" option that could be used twice a year especially for those who pay 6 months and one won't be able to play because of traveling and cashing in would be resumed by expiring time or by user demand, also useful for exam periods with an extra "do not let me unfreeze it 'till the time expires or i will fail".

Sporadic income that might not cover costs of hosting the customer's data?

How is it sporadic?

How is it not covering the cost?

It is just 3 dollars cheaper than a 6 month plan at 10.99 a month.

Keep in mind, most players will be playing more than 10 days a month, so this is a niche payment plan. It's not like everyone is going to jump at this.

However, let's take the worst case CRAZY senario and everyone drops to 7.50 a month. 1 million players = 7.5 million dollars a month.

That is no chump change.

Corrrect, it is no chump change.

However, do you know how much it costs per month to store data for 1 million people, with backups in triplicate, two of which are off-site, as well as bandwidth for when they decide to play?

That's not chump change either. So many people are acting like subscription money is all profit... it's not, it costs a ton of money to run this [censored]. Let's say it costs Zenimax $8.00 per month per customer to host their data and provide bandwidth - at $7.50 per month, how would Zenimax make any money?

I agree, but if you consider the alternative to paying less is quitting or not even signing up in the first place then how much less are they making?

Again, most players will use the normal payment plan, so we are talking about a small amount of the player base.

You are suggesting that every person that joins ESO costs them 8 dollars a month. It is a data base. They are selling a virtual world. How the hell is it going to cost them 8 dollars a person?

That means that if they have 1 million players, you think the monthly cost to keep the game going is 8 million dollars a month.

Which matters more to ZOS, making zero money because someone doesn't buy the game, or losing money on a bad payment model every month?

My company's databases cost $20,000 per month for backups and we're pretty small. All I am saying is that you don't know ZOS's financials. They are charging $15/month ($11 whatever for discount) because they need that money to survive.

If they could manage everything they need, while offering a $7.50 plan, don't you think that might have been an option?

It might have been, but does not mean it would have been.

Let me make this simple for you. I was just asking if people thought it would be a good idea from a players perspective. It is obviously up to ZOS if it would benifit them.