What If DUST 514 Offered a Subscription?

About two weeks ago, I saw a few people, CPM2 candidate Ripley Riley specifically, kicking around the idea of giving DUST 514 some sort of paid subscription. I was rather intrigued by the idea, and as usual, I wanted to get the thoughts and knee jerk reactions of the community, via two forum posts. I put the two posts in two of the more popular areas of the English forums, General Discussions and Features and Ideas Discussion.

One thing that almost everybody agreed upon was that in the event of DUST getting a paid subscription model, would be that the game would retain its free-to-play business model. I know for me personally, I would not play the game if there were some sort of a monthly subscription. It is one of the reasons I do no play EVE Online, or any other subscription based MMO, past the trial period. Being the unemployed gamer that I am (in before “get a job”), I do not always have $15 a month to spend on a game that I would like to play. There are benefits that come with being a subscription based game. CPM2 candidate Pokey Dravon said, “I actually much prefer monthly subscription games….in my experience they tend to be better supported”. He went on to say that he had some concerns about moving to subscription based model from a free-to-play model “at this point in the game”.  He feels a mix of the two models would be the way to go, should such a thing be seriously considered by CCP.

However, if DUST were to adopt a subscription model, while still maintaining its current free-to-play model, I would be fine with it, and so would most of the community. Obviously there will be the occasional forum warrior, bitter veteran, or average merc who would complain, claiming, “It’s pay-to-win! No pay-to-win!” Remember that scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail in which the townspeople are attempting to burn a woman, because she’s a witch? That’s essentially what would happen on the forums. The subscription model will be represented by the woman, the forum population represents to crowd wanting to burn the woman, and the role of Sir Bedevere would be filled by CCP. As the townspeople are carrying the idea of a subscription option to the stake, CCP the Wise would step in and say, “Are you sure it is pay-to-win? Does it look like pay-to-win?” I can answer that for you; No, it is not, and no, it does not look like it.

The community is justified in cries of “pay-to-win” however. Most MMOs that offer a “premium edition”, or have microtransactions, tend to be pay-to-win. Most. If DUST 514 were to have an optional subscription model, then there would have to be incentives that do not turn the game to what everybody hates. How is this accomplished? By not offering special “subscriber only” weapons or dropsuits with increased stats, buffs to ISK payouts or SP generation, buffs to overall damage, or anything of the like. However, I personally would be fine with giving subscribers special SKINs, a certain amount of Aurum each month, or even an editable forum title. Some players have even gone as far as suggesting CCP give boosters to subscribers. In my opinion, this is where the line is drawn. Maybe even with the Aurum too, but really with this suggestion. If CCP were to give subscribers a booster, of any kind, I would consider this pay-to-win. Boosters boost skill point accumulation, thus the name. CCP might as well just hand subscribers all prototype gear, if they were to do this. I do not think they would, if subscriptions were worked into the game, just because the outcries of the community would be so large.

Other players, however, have brought up the point that giving subscribers certain things, whether they be SKINs, forum titles, or what have you, seems classist. They say that it would seem CCP loves the paying party more than the free loaders. While it would seem that way, and maybe it would be (hell, I’d love anybody who paid me), when you give a little, you get a little in return. Personally, I personally have no problem with giving subscribers a forum title, a subscriber only SKIN, or anything of the like. Like I said before, if you give a little, you should get something in return.

These incentives sound great, to me at least, but what would you have to pay to get them? Currently, an EVE Online subscription sits at $15 USD a month. World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and EverQuest also sit at $15 a month. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is $13 USD per month. These games have a lot of content. EVE Online has twenty expansions. Twenty. World of Warcraft has five expansions. Subscription based MMOs have a lot of content, a lot more content than DUST 514 has. DUST has two expansions, if you could call them that, and less content than a full retail game. With that said, would a $15 price tag be too much for DUST, should a subscription come in the future? At this point, yes. I think $10 would be a little bit high too. At the current state, I would pay… $7 for a subscription, I guess. If there were more content, sure, $10 would be acceptable.

I think this is the most interesting thing I have seen on the matter. Lady MDK suggested making DUST 514 a feature within EVE Online. In her idea, to play a public match in DUST, the pilot would dock up in a station, go to a console in their quarters, and queue up a match, just like normal. For Factional Warfare, both DUST mercenaries and EVE pilots could put contracts on districts within a system. These contracts could either request more foot soldiers or more space pilots. Lady MDK goes on to say, “My original idea involved utilizing the download on demand feature of EVE to spot that you only had a non subscribing account and only downloading the modules possible to play dust and interface with the dust market and pub/FW battles and PVE…Oh yea the expansion needs to be called Legion ;)”. Obviously this would all be on PC, since that is where EVE is. If this were to be a thing, maybe the price of an EVE subscription would go up to $20. Who knows? This, in my opinion, is what DUST should have been years ago, and I have a strong feeling that that is what the original goal was. It seemed like CCP Shanghai were getting at something like this with 2014’s DUST Keynote. Where it went off to what it is now is beyond me.

Thank you all for taking time to read this rather lengthy article. I hope you’ll take time to read the ideas that have been put forth about this topic, especially Lady MDK’s suggestion, which is the most interesting thing I have seen. For any EVE players, how would you feel about a $5 price increase, and integrating DUST 514 into EVE Online? DUST players, how would you feel about this? I am very curious to see how the EVE community in particular feels. Let me know in the comments!