So I've been thinking about this since I heard the announcement and read through the Dumpshock thread on the subject.
Now, naturally you guys (the devs) would like to make a living doing this, and we (or at least me) the consumers would also like you to make money so that you can continue to update things and produce a product that really does the setting justice. However F2P doesn't have the most stellar reputation (Evony anyone?) and consumers will rebel against the idea of a game that they feel is a pay to win or otherwise trying to take advantage of them, especially when they are just starting out. These are my thoughts on how I think you may be able to create a system where players are rewarded for giving you money, but where it still remains a viable and enjoyable game for the players who want to play for free, or just spend a minimal amount of money on it.
Now the pen and paper version of Shadowrun has 2 major currencies, Nuyen and Karma. I can't think of any conceivable way you could directly monetize these, as in give us 10 bucks for 250K nuyen or 20 Karma or whatever... That'd be a sure fire way to piss off the player base as well as destroy the core gameplay experience since the core gameplay experience involves shooting people in the face for money. Now Karma in PnP allows your character to advance his skills, while Nuyen lets you buy shiny toys so you've already got two major modes of advancement there. What you guys need is a 3rd resource, one that players can pay to acquire, though they should still earn it through gameplay albeit at a glacial pace. There is also another quasi resource present in a browser based F2P game, player time. If stuff (particularly high level stuff) takes many hours of 'downtime' to acquire then that's a resource you an exploit too.
Now for the payable resource I'm thinking something that might fit well in the game would be something a bit more abstract. Lets call it "influence".
Now influence can be used for a lot of things, that's the beauty of it in a game like Shadowrun is that it it already exists in the background. The easiest and most straightforward example would be using a couple points of influence to accelerate the speed at which you can acquire a given piece of equipment, cyberware or spell... For example, if you don't want to wait 12 hours for Sammy the Street-Doc to get his hands on a sweet alpha grade cyberarm, you can spend a couple points of influence to get it right away. At high levels you may be looking at a week of real time for your street doc contact to get his hands on a deltagrade move by wire system but for a dozen or so influence you could have it instantly.
Another potential use for influence would be as a currency in some sort of 'black market' or 'barrens mall'. You would have to be very, very careful in this regard to make sure you didn't end up leaving the free players in the dust, but it has potential. If you had a black market maybe players could occasionally buy items that wouldn't otherwise be available until they reached the next level, enough to give them a bit of an edge, but no more than that. I'd keep the options available in the barrens mall small and make sure you also included items in it that could be paid for with nuyen so as not to lock out the free players too.
So I've mentioned levels a few times now and I think they would be a useful thing to include even though levels don't exist in the PnP game. Levels do 2 things. First they allow for the use of hitpoints which is a far more intuitive system of gauging damage for the average (non Shadowrun) player than Shadowruns damage tracks. It also lets you scale up the damage output of weapons over the course of the game too so that players feel as though they are advancing in power. They also let you advance new content and power at a reasonable pace independent of how much money someone has spent on the game. This means that experience points should only be acquired through gameplay, there should be no way to spend money and get XP. This way even if you do drop a bundle on the game and your 3rd level street samurai spends buckets of influence to have his contacts acquire him the best gear possible like lighting and he even lurks around the barrens mall to buy as much 4th level stuff as he can, he's still only a 3rd level street samurai albeit a badass one. To gain XP he actually needs to go out and do runs. He'll have a bit of an easier time at it than someone who hasn't spent tons of influence but there is a cap to how fast the guy with lots of money to blow can advance.
A 3rd use for influence might be (and this is just personal taste) to allow the player to 'purchase' multiple shadowrunners. Now I know that Shadowrun is supposed to be an MMO but I'd try to offer the option of single player play as well. I think this is particularly important in a browser game where people might want something that they can play in relatively short fits and starts over lunchbreaks, in the half hour of free time they have after the kids go to bed and stuff like that. I'm not sure how long you see the actual 'runs' taking but to expect players to co-ordinate schedules, spend several days in advance doing legwork, and then dedicate 2 or 3 hours to the actual run itself is asking a bit much. If you're able to undertake runs on your own though you can play at your own pace. The easiest way to do this would be to have Johnsons offer runs that can be completed using just one runner. I'd suggest offering this option anyhow, particularly for low level play since solid groups aren't just going to magically form out of a sea of newbies.
An easy way to do this would be to have a couple different offers available at a given time, each one with a 'suggested team size' ranging from 1-4 or whatever. Players could take on tougher runs solo but at a greater risk
For more advanced players who still don't feel like embracing the whole 'clan' aspect of an MMO I think it would also be worthwhile to give them the option of spending some influence to build a stable of runners, particularly if combat is turn based. It would also give players who do enjoy the multiplayer aspect the chance to build different archtypes to fit different situations and groups. I�m not sure how advancment for multiple characters would work, but I think it�s worthwhile to consider the possibility.
Of course, the last, and perhaps most obvious way to spend influence would be on avatar customization. Want a pink mowhawk? 5 influence. Sweet looking black trenchcoat with glowing mystical symbols? 10 influence. Stuff like that.