What I'd like to see: a moderately-priced ($30-$50 for the year) subscription that gives me monthly new stuff: A couple of new walls for TLX, or a set of props, or something. This would be in addition to the ongoing release schedule.

I would see $30-$50 as a price range that I'm willing to pay to support you guys, and then I can see how well you deliver and how great the service is.

Customers could buy into the subscription at any time during the year and get access to the whole year. After the year is up, customers could buy a download with everything from the year (maybe at a slightly higher price?).

These small sets could be a way for new designers to enter the WWG orbit (they see what it takes behind the scenes to get something out on time, and you get a look at how they do in a production setting).

Steve

I really like the idea of having small-ish expansions for sets too -- a new floor or two that I could use with Friar or Thoumonts walls... a new pack of dungeon walls that I can use with Oubliette floors... etc. I'd feel so much more productive to have little sets to build and enjoy - I often get lost for a while in the sheer volume of options for the full sets! I'd imagine pricing out little expansions would be a pain, but as a subscription, not so bad.

$50-$100 possibly more, as everyone mentions it depends on number of releases and what genre (I'm 99.9% fantasy, and haven't bought other genre builds, though I do admire them, and sometimes go into dream land how I could use a floor tile here or there in a certain capacity).

But it's actually easier for me to say, if I pay more, I will get more in the end, and throw my money at ya, than it is to say well that set looks really neat, and I'd like to use it for x game session, but honestly I'll aok with out it.

Back catalog would be nice, but I think you should definitely set it up as a time vested sort of deal. So if someone sign's up for a month by month, they'll get new releases as they come out, and gain access to x amount of back catalog, so if they pay for 3 months, they get access to one older set. I think something like that is really going to depend on numbers from your business end on sales. Comparing sales of initial release to x time frame later to determine the longevity and continued sales of each product. And than determining how much value they are at that point for someone who would be signing up for a subscription based access, and receive them as rewards based on loyalty.

Sorry if that's garbled, hope that you understand the gist. Would love to provide my support further. And a subscription would make it easier to do so with or without a back catalog depending on genre.

I've only just gotten back into papercrafting after quitting cold turkey 20 years ago, so here's some thoughts from the new customer market:

I do NOT think subscriber-only sets or early set access is a good idea. That seems likely to encourage piracy rather than subscription, and I understand pirates have been cutting into your bottom line a lot already. ("Yes, I'll spend 80 hours in time and $80 on paper and ink but not $11.50 on the actual design and artwork." Jerkfaces.)

Access to the back catalog is of much greater interest to me than getting each new release as it comes out, even with a discount on the new releases. (Although if you keep making more Deadfall sets, that may change. I want a boomtown, and standees, and trains, and mineworks, and a Sioux settlement, and a fort, and a farming homestead, and....)

As others have noted, access to the back catalog is valuable for exactly as long as it takes to download the whole thing - and even at the most, that's a few hours.

I think the wrong way to address this would be a "back catalog rental" sort of subscription, where you lose access to if your subscription lapses. That would cost money and time to implement, and probably would not accomplish much since pirates would get around those problems anyway. It would also make any month in which a subscriber did not print things out effectively wasted, which is not much of a selling point. If you get a set from a subscription, your license should be exactly the same as for buying it normally.

I like the idea a subscription including the purchase of a certain number of sets each month, which could be new releases, back catalog items, or a mixture of both. How many you get each month could depend on how many months you pay for at a time, for a simple example:

Monthly: 1 set at each renewal
Three-month subscription: 4 sets at each renewal
Six-month subscription: 10 sets at each renewal
Annual: Access to the full back catalog

One thing that I think would make a subscription system more appealing would be a regular release of small, inexpensive sets designed to expand the TLX range in general without necessarily acting as boosters/kitbashes for existing sets. For example: a "thatched roofing" set, a set of "snow-covered" transparencies that could slot onto TLX walls and roofs and over tiles, and specific prop-packs like food vendor carts, spider-web transparency inserts, new textures of crates, barrels, and chests, a single new texture for an existing vehicle kit, etc. Sets like these could act as regular (monthly?) releases, included with subscription but still available to non-subscribers for $2-4 each.

As for how much I, personally, would pay? I would pay $100-120 for a one-shot purchase of the existing catalog, entirely apart from any subscription deals for new sets.

personally, I do not like subscription, I prefer to buy what I need.

If forced to subscription then I prefer a yearly fee not monthly.

my AUD$0.02c.

I've just noticed this thread. Interesting idea.

I've been a forum member for 8 years now (ish) and bought 40 WWG PDF sets in total (just about most of the fantasy line plus much of the horror). If you say an average of $15 per set (probably lower due to sales etc, but it's right ballpark), then I spend approx $75 per year on WWG PDF sets.

I can't see an annual subscription much higher than that being too attractive unless you significantly up the release rate of your sets (and even now, they exceed my building rate) or offer exclusive material to subscription members. Also, if the Terraclips sets continue to come out and improve in quality as much the DungeonRise preview indicates, I'll probably buy less PDFs in future, at least until I retire and become a full time paper modeller - much to my wife's horror.

I expect you were hoping for a bigger number, but you did ask for figures

Frank

I just looked at the Vault and Classic sets available ... not as much there as I thought. A lot have been retired. I really liked the three inch high walls and 7"x7" tiles and all the other goodies that came with those sets. There are three I'd like to get but can't see getting a subscription for that. How about cutting the cost of those sets to $5 each.

How soon are you going to decide what you want to do?

Still thinking about my comfort level regarding pricing for the yearly subs.
Regarding 'total' availability of the 'whole catalog', would you be bringing back home to roost the older 'retired' sets now longer listed for sale here, but which are perched over on Paizo?
Granted some are the older quality style, but are still useful because some bits still have not seen a newer 'light of day'. In particular, I reference the two different columns used for the spiral staircase kitbash: the bash is available, but the columns it is supposed to work with is not available (unless one already has the two older sets not even avialble on Paizo!)

The more I think about this, the more I think it would be best to start of with a smaller rollout and build on it. For example, having access to everything would be GREAT but it a big gamble, IMO.

Develop a sub for something on the side (like ProFantasy) which maybe does a few tiles/walls/props per month. Nothing crazy, but consistent. Mix it across genres and see where it goes from there.

I do believe consistency at this point is a huge factor for many of us. So, have a price point that justifies an addon/kitbash-sized release on a consistent monthly basis outside of the normal production schedule. This will maintain the integrity of the full products, not penalize customers who do not want the sub, and allow for the rolling out some great extra content. Plus, as someone said earlier, it may also help onboard some new artists/designers who do not have the time to dedicate to a full release.

I'm not sure it's a gamble. Let me ramble a bit on why I think so:

Realistically, most customers won't buy the entire catalog, subscriptions aside, if they're getting products piece by piece, like we all do right now. Offering an extra incentive such as full access encourages customers to agree to spend money on a regular basis (as in monthly for a year). During that time, they'll see what varied and cool products WWG offers, and they'll start building stuff - which means they'll be coming back for more products to expand their builds, and keep on supporting WWG. WWG profits by acquiring steady income, and steady customers.

Of course, from a customer pov, any such subscription only makes sense in the first place if you can get more bang for the buck compared to regular buying.
As soon as you limit the subscription access to x sets per month, or to a specific line, or to y downloads per month, you need to significantly drop the price to keep the offer being attractive. Also, you're adressing fewer customers with a more limited offer. This, conversely, makes the whole thing less attractive from the seller pov, since the generated income will drop.

Also consider that with a subscription, you're paying in advance for content you might not be terribly interested in. I'm not only talking about genre lines, but also interests within a very narrow focus. Even if WWG offers, frex, a subscription for scifi gigeresque horror props (which I'd get, btw), a subscriber can't know in advance whether the specific props he'll get will be relevant to his current projects. Offer, say, D20-based adventure support, and you run the risk (as a customer) of getting the wrong setting, the wrong power level, or just something you find dull.
This is a factor of uncertainty any subscription comes with, which added bonuses - such as full access - can help overcome.

Real-life anecdote: I stopped subscribing to a fitness magazine because I wasn't interested in the recurring articles on endurance activities outweighing the stuff I was looking for. However, I kept up the subscription for a year because I was getting full access to the archives, even at a point where the current issues didn't do much for me.

Anyway, just tossing a few thoughts out there

I hear you, zorg, and I do think there is a way to fit full access in (and I would like to see it), but like I said in my previous post, how about start small (with a smaller price point as well) and work on the consistent frequency and build from there?

I think you could get many more on board with regular smaller releases because the price would (hopefully) be smaller than the whole kit and kaboodle. Have one or multiple genres per month (a tile and a prop per main genre per month would be awesome with additional materials as possible).

I could see this going for 40-60 per month easily and have a lot of adoption vs what I would think would need to be well over $100 for the "all releases past, present, and future" model. I do think many would go for that as well, but not as many as the way I have posted above.

Again, I am modeling this after the ProFantasy sub for releasing mapping styles and map elements. Yes, you may not be looking for exactly what they offer every month but it gives you a taste of everything any may encourage you to pick up additional sets based on what you see while keeping the integrity of the main production sets intact.

Just a thought. Hopefully we will start to see some concrete feedback and maybe a working plan as to how this might play out from Denny and company "soon".

As much as I have come to appreciate, even love my TLX stuff, committing to a subscription is beyond my interest. My core interests are fantasy. Currently I have most of the fantasy stuff on my H/D. The stuff I have actually built are for the most part out of two sets, with a smattering of a few more. Having more than just a couple of sets is mostly because of timely sales on your part matching with extra cash on my part.

Most months I find that extra cash goes to a new pair of court shoes, or new uniforms, or fees for camp, or something else unmentioned to me last month that has to be covered now. What keeps me living on the edge are things like the accidents my son gets into and I need a new car, or the engine that needs to be rebuilt because he can't find the right gear, or it is too difficult to remember to check the oil or get around to actually putting the oil in the engine.

With my daughter taking two classes at the local community college she found that too stressful, so she quit both classes, on finals week. Now I get to pay for half a semester her high school was going to pay for.

Sorry, I can't deal with another bill, even if it is for a measly ten bucks a month. This stuff is a hobby for me, something to take my mind off my financial worries for a few hours at night. I really don't need it to become another source of worry to me. Having said this, I will be buying more sets, and truly hope I can assist WWG in my very small way to stay in business.

The amount I'd be willing to pay would be determined by what I was getting for it. I can't make an honest determination of one without the other. The way I could think about it at this point would be how much of a discount off the "sticker price" would make it worth my while to subscribe...

One thought I had is that some settings aren't as useful to me as others... In my determination of how much of a discount I would want, I'd want to know what kinds of sets I was getting. If it was all settings, I'd want something like a 30% discount, because not all of the settings are of equal interest to me and there'd be some I'd never use. If I could select a genre, I'd be more comfortable in the 10-20% range, because then I'd know I'd use more of it. I'd scoop up a Fantasy subscription in a heartbeat, but I'd have to think longer and harder (and have more motivation) to get a Store-wide subscription.

Another possible motivation for a subscription would be freebies... Something like The Sentinel released only to subscribers would be motivating to me. Or maybe some kind of cool decorative or utility pieces in a set only available to subscribers would be motivating to me as well... A few items I couldn't get otherwise would make it worth my while, like throne room set pieces for a castle set or something of the like...

Thank you for all the feedback everyone! It was really great to have the opportunity to ask this question after wondering about it for so long.

At the end of the day I think this just isn't the right fit for what we're offering here. There are simply too many variables, too many disparate wants/needs and an expectation on frequency that would make it a real economic challenge to deliver on consistently. That being said, I do believe there are ways to integrate some of the feedback you've given us. It will definitely hold some sway in how we approach semi-related issues.

Thanks again all!