Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
[Voting Poll included] Game being F2P and P2P at same time? Ideal solution? or not?
Sulaa
Member UncommonPosts: 1,329
[VOTING POLL IS AT END OF THIS POST - sorry]
Lately I was thinking alot about F2P and P2P models.
It is clear that community is very divided in their opinions and actions concerning those two models.
Game developers by choosing P2P "cut themselves from" majority of F2P supporters , and similarly by going F2P they "cut themselves from" majority of P2P supporters.
Some game studios try to address issue by creating variant of F2P = "freemium" model. It definately works for some , but it does not solve a issue. Why? Will explain it below:
Some P2P supporters don't like "freemium" model becasue evven if they subscribe to freemium game they still have to deal with item store that has wide choice of items and including items that gives some advantage. Good example is Lotro. If player want to make his character as powerful as possible , he will have to buy : stat tomes and possibly store-exclusive relics.
What about F2P supporters and "freemium" model. Well many F2P supporters don't like it because: they might be "second grade players" by having alot of inconvieniences until they subscribe (and if they do they stop beign "free").
But what is more important. Freemium games are more costly in terms of "content access" , Lotro again beign most known freemium game is good example. Apart of paid quest-packs there are 2 paid expansions and 3 rd paid expansion coming soon.
You also have to pay for other things you don't have to pay in many "pure" F2P games. That include crafting tier unlock, traits unlock , separate dungeon packs unlock, skirmishes unlock ,etc
So concluding: while freemium model has ability to attract some of P2P players and some F2P players, it still leave big "chunks" of those players uninterested in game.
Solution?
Make game have P2P and F2P servers!!
Disadvatages of this solution:
- higher development costs
- more difficult marketting
- higher maintenance costs (having to menage a situation where in one version of game store items exist while in other most of them don't exist)
Advantages of this solution:
- much bigger and broader potential playerbase
- having two bit diffrent types of income
- very good marketing advantage ("we care for all palyers" , "we offer a game suited to all tastes" , "choose yourself how to spend your money" ,etc)
What need imho to be done so this solutution is good and effective. There is one game that has this solution, but it is not implemented correctly there imho. Game I am talking about is EQ2.
What have to be implemented and also including some of dffrent rules than it is done in EQ2/EQ2X so whole F2P/P2P solution works better.
-------------------------------
What has to be:
- Even though there will be F2P servers, there also HAVE to be standard 14 - 30 days trial for P2P servers. This is one most important things that are missing from EQ2 atm. Without trial you severely cripple fresh blood coming to P2P servers and whole solution is to attract to as much players as possible and not limit it.
- There has to be SAME account used for F2P servers and P2P servers. Forcing players to have two separate accounts if they want to play on both F2P/P2P servers with DIFFRENT characters is really bad.
- Characters cannot be transferable between F2P and P2P servers for any kind of fee. It would be pointless to have separate P2P and F2P servers if you could buy items on F2P server and then transfer it to P2P server. Transfers from P2P to F2P imho maybe also should be prohibited(thou not 100% sure) because if you transfer from P2P to F2P and then change your mind becasue you miss friends that stayed on P2P server , you cannot go back which might result in frusttration and abandoning game.
- P2P version should not have ANY kind of item store. Having jsut smaller item store than f2p , changes p2p servers into freemium servers in eyes of some players.
- Some (but important not ALL) items from item store from F2P servers need to be implemented as in-game rewards in P2P servers. This especially in important in case of cosmetic items and some items that are requied in games mechanics.
This can be done preety easily and low-cost. Items themselves and/or recipes to make those items , might be put as :
world drops, dungeons drops, quest rewards, achievements rewards
So that is basics of my idea.
Question is:
Would you like that future mmorpg games have had both option to play them as P2P and F2P on separate servers with above rules?
Make a statement and discuss!
Comments
Surely EVE's PLEX model resolves just about all the disadvantages you are worried about? Development costs are minimal, the in game "penalty" for being F2P is determined by the aggregate value the playerbase themselves place on free play, and everyone plays exactly the same game otherwise.
For those unfamiliar:
Player A buys a 60-day game time code.
Player A redeems the code for two in-game items called PLEX, which he can then trade to other players, like any other in-game item
Player B buys a PLEX from the market
Player B uses a PLEX to add 30 days to his subscription.
In effect, Player A pays for Player B to play for 30 days in return for some of Player B's in-game currency. Player B gets to play for free (as far as real life currency is concerned), and the game developer gets full price for every subscription.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
The problem is that theirs a barrier to entry in the sense that your going to have to pay for your first month and make enough money to keep paying later on which sort of defeats the entire purpose of f2p being open and non-commitment for those willing to give it a shot.
There is problem becasuse PLEX system is basically legitimate gold selling by game company.
This is main reason I don't play Eve ,(thought there are other reasons as well) but please let's not start discussion whenever gold sellign is good and how much it influences or not Eve Online. That is not what this thread is about.
I don't accept gold selling by a game company in P2P game.
For F2P player you have entry barrier. Game is not really "f2p" if you have to pay in oder to play isn't it?
CCP isn't selling gold. The plex system introduces no new money into the game at all. All it does is enable one player to trade "gold" to another player in exchange for days added to the first players subscription time. Again, no new money is introduced into the system this way. CCP makes the same amount of money whether player A or player B buys the subscription time. The only people who benefit from this system are the players.
Besides, isk is so easy to make that plexes should hardly be an issue to anyone who doesn't suck at the game.
I am aware of that. I've been playing Eve Online and I still follow info about this game and incidentally even read Eve Forums.
Still I don't accept that.
I understand that you might not understand this , but I am against situation that player is legally able to buy gold even if game company don't create gold (isk) from "nothing".
Other thing I hate in Eve is legal character trading.
Both are things that imho should not be in P2P game.
Anyway nice discussion but I would like to keep this thread on rails as much as possible, to get know if people would like to have system described in OP and not start discussing mainly if other systems might be even better or not. Bcasue we might then start to discuss about B2P, freemium, various diffrent F2P models , etc
Is that an above or in-ground pool? :P
While the idea sounds good on paper, i'm just not so sure that bringing the two groups together (so to speak) is a good thing.
No matter which side someone is on, they're always going to compare the two and it will cause confliction between the entire community and any out of game discussion will be nothing but hate for the other side. "You're fools, you pay monthly for the same thing I pay nothing for" "No you're fools, you pay x3 the ammount I do per month eventually" "blahblahblah".
We've all seen that sort of non-sense happen here many times, wouldn't want to see what it would be like centered around a single game with segregated servers.
That would not exactly a good thing for business, especially when looking to continuously attract new players and if all people see is inflamed arguements. It would likely only keep escalating as time went on too, it would just not reflect well on what sort of community is actually playing the game and could possibly cause more harm than good.
There is EQ2 already having this kind of business model implemented. Problem is they implemented it wrongly , made some small mistakes that kinda downplay entire idea imho. Besides it is old game. Anyway it is working and AFAIK there is no constant flame and hate between both groups. So your argument don't really hold ground.
Edit: yeah pool would be better to be first thing in OP , but erm I don't know how to change it's position tbh
anyone know?
I don't even know the first thing about EQ2, nor do I care at this point in it's lifespan, and I wouldn't be surprized if there are many others who feel that way too. That may be partly why there is no "QQ" explosion, but I still feel in my gut that a new and popular game would suffer for the reasons mentioned.
I guess I missed the part where you mention a cross server options too, where characters/accounts can be played on either P2P or F2P servers, so it would sort of be similar to one server running with both payment options available in a sense.
How would you plan on that not being abused? and what's to stop a P2P char from maxing out, then switching over to F2P til the end of days, all the while not having to spend anything on his gear?
I find it hard to believe that would not cause conflicts between the community too.
(PS. I'm not sure you can change the poll's position, but I was only giving a gentle teasing about the typo in the title
It should say Poll not Pool, but hey it's summer, we all have sparkling.. cool.. refreshing water on the minds at times.)
EQ2 forums are still alive , and there was preety big uproar at beggining , when they did F2P servers, it quickly stopped.
I covered that in my first post.
In my idea there will be one account but characters from P2P would be stuck on P2P servers only (with options to transfer them only to other P2P servers) and F2P characters stuck on F2P servers only (with option to transfer to other F2P server only).
It is preety simple. Technology is already there. In multiple games you cannot transfer character to some servers.
It is easy to programm. You flag F2P characters and servers with F2P tag ,and P2P characters and servers with P2P flag.
When someone try to pay to transfer character to other server, script check what tag is on character and then list only servers tagged the same as server currently charcter is on.
Preety simple.
This is like 2+2 when it comes to script this.
So P2P chacter can only be transfered to other P2P server , while F2P characere only to other F2P server.
No cross business model character transfers.
As for logging. You log to your account. Say you have character named "Conan" whcih is on F2P server , and character named "Durum" which is on P2P server.
If you don't pay P2P subsciption you can only log "Conan" character.
Very very simple ,especially if you design system like that from the scratch. Modyfying already existing system with hundred of thousands or millions of accounts in existing game would be harder, not because of how to programm/script it but becasue of very high number of existing accounts.
Still it would be doable. Freemium games like Lotro/ AoC clearly showed that "tagging" character diffrently depending on if you pay subscription or not is doable even in old game.
Edit: ty for making me aware of typo. English is not my native language and I sometimes do typos like that
Combining the worst aspects of both business plans? I'll pass. P2P with the expected Cash Shop / Item Mall / P2Win that comes with F2P? A huge "No" for me.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
I think you totally misunderstood what I meant.
Idea is that one game can offer to you two separate business model you can choose to play.
Game would offer two separate kind of servers , P2P servers would need subscription to play them but there would be no item shop there! F2P servers would no need subscription on the other hand.
But if you create character on P2P server than when you log this character there WON'T be any item shop there at all!!!
Same when you create character on F2P server you won't pay any subscription for this character!!!
I am happy to explain it better again if needed , though I would advise to read OP post again.
This has nothing to do with combining P2P with P2W !!!! Actually it is completly opposite.
The thing is from the publisher's point of view, they don't want players to have options, they want to be able to make as much money as possibe, so they will either do p2p with a cash shop or if they don't think the game can support subs, f2p with a cash shop. Publishers won't give players an option to avoid their cash shop if there is one in the game.
Take EvE for example with their latest xpac, Incarna. Even though there is literally nothing to do in station at this point and that it breaks the game lore, if you dock you are forced to leave your ship and enter your avatar because they want to make sure every single player at least has the opportunity to see and then possibly want to buy something from the cash shop. If they didn't force it, a given percentage of players would never leave their ships, why should the publisher accept that if they can force it?
Do P2P players have to buy the box?
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Not sure why you would have to separate the community based on how they pay. Perhaps the freemim models are just poorly designed. If they were able to integrate the two well, there would be no need for separate servers. If subscribers are still being bribed into using the cash shop even though they have a subscription, that is poor design in my opinion. I think they should fix the model instead of separating the community.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
if the p2p and f2p servers were entirely seperate.. i would consider it.. i would never even consider a game that mixed both on the same server...
So long as P2P gets full access as part of their monthly sub to everything F2P have to pay for in the item shop, and characters from F2P cannot switch to P2P servers, sure.
So long as I can just pay my monthly fee and get the full game, no item mall crap, then I honestly don't care if there's a F2P version that does.
Why? What if you couldn't tell who payed what? I don't see what the difference would be. The only thing I can think of is if some F2P players haven't payed for the dungeon you want to go to, or something like that. Again, if the game mechanics try to bribe subscribers into using the cash shop, then that is poor design. Do you have a problem with people who don't like to pay the same way as you?
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Despite what you pointed out regarding the need for tomes and storebought items to be completely maxed out, if you're paying a sub you're getting points for the store anyway and depending on the time it takes to reach endgame (might be more of an issue for those that rush through games as though endgame is all that matters) I don't see how it is an issue. You get store currency for subbing, you get store currency for completing in-game things that award it. I'll stay with freemium so long as the cash shop is legitimate.
If it was paying to unlock access to content, that's a more acceptable way to allow the two to be mixed. The main concern, for me anyways, is the item mall 'vanity items' and 'buffs' that are usually sold.
If it was purely unlocking content in the item mall for F2P players, and all content was open to subscribers, I would be more inclinded to tolerate such a system. The problem is that this is rarely the case.
I definitely think that all mmos should offer a full P2P sub option (like AOC, LOTRO, etc.) for those of us that prefer not to use cash shops. For me it's not a matter of having the money. I could sub 10 games a month if I wanted to. It's about getting value for my dollar. I'll only pay for what I think is worth it.
Freemium model is variant of F2P model.
Even though you can subscribe in freemium model, you still get extensive item mall in freemium games.
That is the problem. Problem is not that some people pay for game diffrently , problem is big item mall itself and impact is has in game.
Imho there is no way around this. Item mall in f2/freemium game has to have alot of items in it ,and most of those items have to be attainable only from store or drop rate in game have to be very very low so people spent money in store. You cannot change that because that what whole item shop model is based about.
Besides It is all really matter of perspective. You say separate community I say giving people more options , remember that in my model you can have f.e some of your characters on P2P servers and some on F2P servers, so it is not really separating.
EQ2 and EQ2X when this kind of model existt (though poorly imlemented) share the same forum. There is some separate section for EQ2X but it is same thing as there is separate F2P section in Lotro forums.
So in my model players are not separated , only certain characters are. Everything else stays , players can still exchange ideas about quests, dungeons ,crafting ,etc between themselves even if one player play F2P with item shop and second one play P2P without item mall.
You missing the point. It is not about the money or at least that is less important thing. I can afford most items in store.
Actually when I was playing Lotro I had lifetime account and when I left Lotro I still had over 7k Turbine Points + ofc 500 everuy month. So you can clearly see I could buy what I wanted from store ,especially that I was not into xp buffs or store-exclusive mounts. Thing is that many P2P suporters DON'T want an item mall in game with items appearing from thin air for real cash. They want for game items to be attainable ONLY through gameplay. I covered it a bit more in OP post I think.
That is the idea. Player can create characters on either F2P and P2P servers if they choose to so you can have some characters on F2P and some on P2P servers , but once character is created this created this character have to stay on P2P or F2P servers. There is no character transfer between F2P and P2P servers like never for any amont of money.
Though of course it is possible to pay for character transfer from one F2P server to other F2P or from one P2P server to other P2P server.
I hope this is understandable and clear it.
Lotro and AoC are not P2P games anymore. Having subscription don't change that. You don't get as much as you get in P2P games for those subs. Turbine is aware of that , they were saying this themselves and when Lotro F2P(Freemium) started they did lower subscription price. Not to mention that you get less and less for your ViP subscription gradually as item store expands.
Will be interesting to see Lotro item store after Isengard and some time after when Swtor/ Gw2 will be released. But sorry for de-rail that is talk for diffrent topic.
--------
Thanks for all input and votes.
-------
My bottom line is that I am trying to think about a system where diffrent game expectations and pay methods are covered. So as many players as possible are happy and game studio has business models attractive to as many potential players out there, without alienating and pushing back part of community by choosing only between F2P/Freemium or P2P model.
options are ALWAYS a good thing
Leaving aside the fact that CCP dont sell any "gold", even if they did, how would this be worse than the normal cash shop that F2P games have?
Give me liberty or give me lasers
If that's true, then F2P gives you exactly that. With subscription you pay whether you use theproduct or not that month. You pay for all new content no matter whether you want or even need it. You pay for all the content of an expansion in order to be able to progress beyond where you are. In F2P, you only pay for the extras that you want and that fit your playstyle. If a ton of new stuff is introduced and none of it is for you, it costs you nothing in F2P. Based on what you expressed is your concern - value for your dollar and only paying for what you think is worth it - F2P is a far more logical business model.
EDIT: And how this went three pages without a single person mentioning Puzzle Pirates is amazing.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Fore me FTP or Freemium are perfect because unlike alot of players its the journey I enjoy the most & not the Endgame "Raiding ect" I don't need to be epic geared or have the best sword in the game so FTP is great . I have been playing FTP games for years & never purchased a single item
Now if you wan't to make money with a freemium type game like LOTRO I would look at the type of people that spend money & more importantly when they spend it .. I bet you will find 80% + is spent at the level Cap .. so If you were just alittle greedy
& we all know MMO Developers are I would raise the level Cap at least Once a year ..