Businesses are figuring out that people are retarded when it comes to money.
lay down a huge one time fee and people rage.
Nickle and dime them for 5x more money over a longer period and people somehow equate that to being cheaper.
It started with iTunes. $.99 for a song. 500 songs = $500. And people were okay with this (obviously some were hit with sticker shock at the first of the month when their statement came in, but while they were making $1 purchases, they were none the wiser)
Many gamers are even worse when i comes to money. This is prevalent in consoles and is slowly making its way to PC users. Pay $60 for a game, $50/yr for service, then $50+ for DLC.
A friend of mine balked at the cost of RIFT ("I have to buy the game, THEN pay a monthly fee on top of it!?"), but had no problem blowing $150 over 5 months on League of Legends.
people love to finance stuff. To them it seems cheaper.
They will kill the games for most of us, but nevertheless they will make more money...
I am still wayting for the pay for content gamemodel... Play for free but there is an access fee for new zones and areas. But then without the typically itemshop that comes with DnD online, Lotro, and the new EQ2 qnd AoC models.
Or even better, you pay the box, and for all content patches (not nerfbat patches, but real content patches) and no sub at all. This guarantees that the devs will have to concentrate on adding great content.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I think that good F2P games *can* exist. I just haven't really seen any yet... I've heard League of Legends is doing well though?
I think the business model itself is great. It's unfortunate that most companies abuse it though, which means they are in it for a quick cash grab before their poor management crashes the game into the ground. Yes, there are "pay2win" games out there and they don't last long, because people get tired of that system and even the people who paid to win will get bored when they no longer have any free players to use their paid weapons against.
I think the best system is a f2p model based on points that you purchase. These points can be spent buying vanity or convenience items from the shop, or they can be used to buy other player's in-game goods. This actually does two things:
1. It lets players who can't afford the game, not only play the game for free, but earn in-game stuff that they sell for cash points which allows them to buy cash shop items without ever investing a dollar into the game itself
2. It creates more incentive for people to buy points with real money, as you not only can buy cash shop items, but also in-game items as well.
Now some might say that it's the equivalent of "paying 2 win" when you can just buy in-game items for cash. But here's the thing... those items being bought are just normal in-game items that can be earned without paying any money. So there's no advantage there, only convenience.
Paying players get what they want, while also helping cover the cost of free players.
Free players don't get pushed out by "pay2win" players with cash shop only weapons and upgrades, and can also even earn their own cash points through hard work in-game.
And I love the people that just rail on about the virtues of F2P. In their quest for something "free" and by embracing this model gamers have egged developers on and have now been trained to accept the fact that apparently its okay for people to drop 600 bucks on a computer game so they can be "competitive". But thats okay I can still play my gimped character for FREE!! FREE !! did you hear me man its FREE! Paying 15 bucks for a game that I actually really liked was putting me in the poor house!
Gamers have fallen for this hook line and sinker. Come back and see me when you finally find a F2P game that you REALLY do like and want to play for longer than the three months it takes most people to burn out on F2P games, Come back to me crying when you suddenly realize your now that guy that has to drop 600 bucks on a game to get everything he wants.
Businesses are figuring out that people are retarded when it comes to money.
lay down a huge one time fee and people rage.
Nickle and dime them for 5x more money over a longer period and people somehow equate that to being cheaper.
It started with iTunes. $.99 for a song. 500 songs = $500. And people were okay with this (obviously some were hit with sticker shock at the first of the month when their statement came in, but while they were making $1 purchases, they were none the wiser)
Many gamers are even worse when i comes to money. This is prevalent in consoles and is slowly making its way to PC users. Pay $60 for a game, $50/yr for service, then $50+ for DLC.
A friend of mine balked at the cost of RIFT ("I have to buy the game, THEN pay a monthly fee on top of it!?"), but had no problem blowing $150 over 5 months on League of Legends.
people love to finance stuff. To them it seems cheaper.
You got it man. "Free" to play is successful because people hate to do math and can't see the big picture. Give me $60 to play forever? No way! Play for free, but pay about $3 a day to buy goodies? Sure! I mean, it's really crazy how people's psychology is, there is just some aversion to big numbers. Why do you think a $50 item is priced $49.99?
People also don't seem to get that what there paying for may be a bit of a scam. For example, if I told someone that a developer intentionally made parts of their game a horrible grind, but you can pay $60 to skip the grind, you would think that's horrible. But well, what do you think exp potions are? If the developers didn't make the game grindy, there would be no need for exp potions because the game would actually be fun. People wouldn't want to skip it.
I made a facetious poll that basically asked players if they would like a business model where a game was made to be really grindy, but they could pay differing amoutns of money to skip parts of the grind. The sums would be paid flat out, like $80 up front to skip 75% of the grindy content. As expected, over 80% of respondants hated this business model.
But really, all I did was present the F2P paradigm in a way that didn't try to deceive the consumer. In the end, we learn that when you tell people that you're going to f$ck them, they're not happy. But when you seduce them into being f$cked, they go along with it just fine.
I play Runes of Magic and for a few bucks got a couple mounts and my house furnished. Does that mean I'm paying to win? Who am I competing against? I just PVE and keep to myself. Considering that I've played for like 2 years now (since launch) that might work out to something like $2.00 per month. Whoah, that's wicked expensive.
Bad Frogster... bad! *grin*
Not all games are scams.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
Then your issue isn't with the F2P business model in general, just the fact that a lot of F2P games make it so you need to spend a ton of money to stay competitive.
It isn't impossible that a F2P game could be made where you only need to spend the $15-$20 per month to stay competitive instead of the $50+ that most games at the moment get up to. But I agree that it's totally wrong to develop a game with intentional grind, knowing that players will want to buy a way to skip that grind. That's just bad game design and looking to make a quick buck.
Then your issue isn't with the F2P business model in general, just the fact that a lot of F2P games make it so you need to spend a ton of money to stay competitive.
It isn't impossible that a F2P game could be made where you only need to spend the $15-$20 per month to stay competitive instead of the $50+ that most games at the moment get up to. But I agree that it's totally wrong to develop a game with intentional grind, knowing that players will want to buy a way to skip that grind. That's just bad game design and looking to make a quick buck.
This is accurate for me. I may have been a bit overzealous in labeling ALL F2P games as having the P2W and deceptive tactics that I outlined in my previous post. I have no issue with F2P games that use microtransactions responsibly. I DO have an issue when microtransactions are used in any of the following ways:
1. Pay to win - Allowing players to spend money to gain some kind of real advantage over other players in PvP.
2. Double Dipping - Combining heavy microtransactions with a subscription (minor MTs are okay, or MTs that sell NEW content).
3. Pay to skip - Allowing players to pay money to skip playing parts of the game or be "fast-tracked" through. EXP potions fall into this category. I dislike this because it encourages developers to make their games grindy. They are basically charging you to skip portions of the game that they made deliberately bad.
4. Exorbitant prices - Offering items like a monocle for $60 is ridiculous. Items in a cash shop should be priced fairly as we would expect from the current pricing model that MMORPGs have ($15 for subs, $30-60 for a box).
5. Pay to maintain - I don't know if any MMORPGs are doing this, but CCGs like Magic used a tactic where they would release new card sets every now and then that had advantages that could only be countered by buying the new card set. So even if you had a killer deck with the original Magic cards, you would have to buy cards from the new card set when it came out to remain competitive.
I could easily see MMORPGs doing this by releasing new skills, weapons, items or whatever every month or so that you would need to purchase to remain competitive. At this point, the game becomes little more than a deceptive subscription.
6. Disproportionate nickeling and diming - If I'm a developer/publisher and I have a new game I want to market I have a few choices. I can either sell the game as a whole for $60 or so, or I can carve it up into a bunch of different pieces and then let people play the "core" game for free, but purchase the separate pieces as they desire.
If the combined price of the separate pieces (i.e. the full game) adds up to $60 that's fine, even $80 or so would be fine to compensate for the fact that people have more flexibility in their purchasing. But when the combined price of the pieces adds up to $200? That's messed up. This is basically an attempt to trick people into spending more money using the denomination effect.
This is accurate for me. I may have been a bit overzealous in labeling ALL F2P games as having the P2W and deceptive tactics that I outlined in my previous post. I have no issue with F2P games that use microtransactions responsibly. I DO have an issue when microtransactions are used in any of the following ways
I agree with all your points. Though #3 (pay to skip) I am sort of on the fence about. I think that as long as the game isn't grindy, then having something like EXP potions are okay. The reasoning behind this is that even if your game is super fun to play, there might still be elements of having to spend a lot of time getting to a particular point in the game. Someone who doesn't have a lot of time to play the game could then pay to catch up with friends or just other players in general. It would be more of a convenience thing and less of a "we have to buy EXP potions because the grind is too much" thing.
It's not really hurting anyone if someone pays to jump ahead. It's the same thing as paying for endgame weapons. Either way, the person *could* have earned them through playing the game. They just didn't want to spend that time or couldn't spend that time. This really only hurts people who value time played in game over everything else. Which I think is a silly notion. Just because you play a game 10 hours a day doesn't mean you deserve to have stuff everyone else can't get without doing the same. Especially in a f2p game where you have people who play the game for 10 hours a day and never give the company a dime. Hence the need to let people spend money to get to that same level, so they are paying for these people who never want to pay for a game.
As for #6, well it can be argued that eventually more stuff would be added to the shop... so you would have to consider that as an "expansion" to the game. It's not fair to say that you could buy everything in the cash shop for the price of a single game, because there might be more content than would have been in a single game.
I guess this is all just speculation though... Right now most F2P games are pretty terrible and are breaking a lot of these no-no rules. But I do think that a F2P business model can work well, if done right. I don't think it's fair to shun an entire business model based on the current trend of things.
People also need to realize that when they complain about having to pay more than $50-$60 to play an MMO... most of these people are probably playing the game for hundreds of hours. That's a whole lot of value if you ask me. Considering most offilne games nowadays give you maybe 30-40 hours of play time (if even that) and cost $50-$60. You end up beating the game (or getting bored with it) and not playing it again. But with an MMO you might play it for years. You might play it 40 hours a WEEK. So to complain about having to pay $100+ to play an MMO that you are getting hundreds of hours of entertainment from, falls on deaf ears to me.
You can't lay all the blame on greedy MMO companies trying to double dip in our wallets. Players told these companies a decade or more ago that they will pay for more than access to games. They told them so by purchasing items, gold, and power leveling through an illicit black market that breeds account theft, hacking, and sweatshops, and possibly even money laundering.
They also told the companies they were fine with RMT by using online sites like eBay to sell their characters, accounts, and items, then bitching about the Evil Corporate Empires taking away their god-given rights to sell their property online however they damn well wished because they'd bought the discs and owned the game and therefore owned their characters.
Cash shops and legal RMT in MMO's did not just pop up out of nowhere. They are a response to a the gamers themselves, by their own actions, showing that they would pay the extra money. Western compaines looked at all the money they were losing to eBay and to the black market, and they looked at the cash shop systems that were popular in Asia, and they adjusted accordingly.
This is accurate for me. I may have been a bit overzealous in labeling ALL F2P games as having the P2W and deceptive tactics that I outlined in my previous post. I have no issue with F2P games that use microtransactions responsibly. I DO have an issue when microtransactions are used in any of the following ways
I agree with all your points. Though #3 (pay to skip) I am sort of on the fence about. I think that as long as the game isn't grindy, then having something like EXP potions are okay. The reasoning behind this is that even if your game is super fun to play, there might still be elements of having to spend a lot of time getting to a particular point in the game. Someone who doesn't have a lot of time to play the game could then pay to catch up with friends or just other players in general. It would be more of a convenience thing and less of a "we have to buy EXP potions because the grind is too much" thing.
It's not really hurting anyone if someone pays to jump ahead. It's the same thing as paying for endgame weapons. Either way, the person *could* have earned them through playing the game. They just didn't want to spend that time or couldn't spend that time. This really only hurts people who value time played in game over everything else. Which I think is a silly notion. Just because you play a game 10 hours a day doesn't mean you deserve to have stuff everyone else can't get without doing the same. Especially in a f2p game where you have people who play the game for 10 hours a day and never give the company a dime. Hence the need to let people spend money to get to that same level, so they are paying for these people who never want to pay for a game.
As for #6, well it can be argued that eventually more stuff would be added to the shop... so you would have to consider that as an "expansion" to the game. It's not fair to say that you could buy everything in the cash shop for the price of a single game, because there might be more content than would have been in a single game.
I guess this is all just speculation though... Right now most F2P games are pretty terrible and are breaking a lot of these no-no rules. But I do think that a F2P business model can work well, if done right. I don't think it's fair to shun an entire business model based on the current trend of things.
People also need to realize that when they complain about having to pay more than $50-$60 to play an MMO... most of these people are probably playing the game for hundreds of hours. That's a whole lot of value if you ask me. Considering most offilne games nowadays give you maybe 30-40 hours of play time (if even that) and cost $50-$60. You end up beating the game (or getting bored with it) and not playing it again. But with an MMO you might play it for years. You might play it 40 hours a WEEK. So to complain about having to pay $100+ to play an MMO that you are getting hundreds of hours of entertainment from, falls on deaf ears to me.
Yeah the problem I have with "pay to skip" isn't with the fact that people can complete the game faster than me, this doesn't really bother me much. Unless they are getting some huge advantage over me by completing the game quicker...then it's kind of pay to win. But anyway, what bothers me is that it gives developers incentives to make bad games.
If you're intending to make money from pay to skip items like exp potions, then it's really in your interest to make the game long and grindy.
And for #6, the nickel and diming thing, I was talking about at release. If all of the MT items for a game at release cost $200-$300 dollars then I think it's kind of a rip off. If the game has been out for a few years, then that's not a fair comparison.
I also agree that $50-$60 for an MMO + a subscription fee is a fair price. I never had an issue with this. My only issue is that companies sometimes try a "stealth" price hike by using microtransactions. So long as I'm paying similar to what I was paying before with an MT game, I would be okay.
First i understand your aggrivation, however, the model for subs isn't much better and heres why, you claim that people don't have time to grind out the items they need, well WoW has that model. you have to run x number of dungeons to A: wait for a drop thats usually NOT going to drop for you because of their failed random item algorithm B: grind about 100 heroic dungeons to get anything of value from their point system C: finally get enough to get into a raid situation where you have to run 50 raids to do it all over again and grind out a raid-only rep faction to get something of value from them. Rift, WoW, EQ2 (before the shop) etc etc all have this model and they are all sub only.
Second, not every game has a P2Win scenario. Lotro comes to mind on this point but then again they are THE most successful western implementation of the F2P model something that every F2P model should follow in the future. They just plain keep making money. I love their model because I can play for free, earn points to spend on anything including mounts, zone unlocks for free. I can buy things ocassionally however they do NOT sell end game gear thus destroying your idea that F2P = P2Win because unlike ALLODs and games like that you can't buy the items you need to improve your toons output of DPS it has to be earned. There are enhancements for gear like the legacies (enchants really) for legendary gear and you can buy those yes HOWEVER nothing there is NOTHING in the store that i didn't get for my end game gear from doing Volume III epic solo quests. I literally got epics from those quests which is a great model to follow.
Yes there are pleanty of games that do this, i just experienced two this week that stated they were F2P models and turned out to be anything BUT, however claiming that the entire western gaming dev community is doing the same thing is short sighted and gives us insight into the deep seeded ignorance you have about how this industry is ACTUALLY playing out.
If you look at the revenue numbers, gamers know and the companies that are playing P2Win models aren't making as much as Lotro and others who follow Lotro's model. Trust me they're marketing departments have taken notice, it's only a matter of time if the people in charge are smart.
And I love the people that just rail on about the virtues of F2P. In their quest for something "free" and by embracing this model gamers have egged developers on and have now been trained to accept the fact that apparently its okay for people to drop 600 bucks on a computer game so they can be "competitive". But thats okay I can still play my gimped character for FREE!! FREE !! did you hear me man its FREE! Paying 15 bucks for a game that I actually really liked was putting me in the poor house!
Gamers have fallen for this hook line and sinker. Come back and see me when you finally find a F2P game that you REALLY do like and want to play for longer than the three months it takes most people to burn out on F2P games, Come back to me crying when you suddenly realize your now that guy that has to drop 600 bucks on a game to get everything he wants.
It's a service that caters to a valid market.
There are two kinds of players in the F2P game.
There's the "free" players. They won't stick around for more than 3 months no matter what. So by the time the grind hits and it's time to pay cash or get REALLY bored, they are leaving. But they were leaving anyway. That's their attention span.
Then there's the player that likes digital shopping. THey love deciding which digital item to buy next. Heck, it's more fun for them to purchase a digital item than actually play the game iwth that item.
you've seen how popular QVC is. Some people love to shop.
PLUS, they get to feel superior, because they have cool stuff, and the newbs that don't pay, don't.
So it satisfies both of those players, and the developers make money.
You can't lay all the blame on greedy MMO companies trying to double dip in our wallets. Players told these companies a decade or more ago that they will pay for more than access to games. They told them so by purchasing items, gold, and power leveling through an illicit black market that breeds account theft, hacking, and sweatshops, and possibly even money laundering.
They also told the companies they were fine with RMT by using online sites like eBay to sell their characters, accounts, and items, then bitching about the Evil Corporate Empires taking away their god-given rights to sell their property online however they damn well wished because they'd bought the discs and owned the game and therefore owned their characters.
Cash shops and legal RMT in MMO's did not just pop up out of nowhere. They are a response to a the gamers themselves, by their own actions, showing that they would pay the extra money. Western compaines looked at all the money they were losing to eBay and to the black market, and they looked at the cash shop systems that were popular in Asia, and they adjusted accordingly.
The big difference is ebay sales of gold or items, are items that are created by characters playing the game.
Whether you sell the item to another playr or not, it was still created by a player, playing the game.
Cash shop games turn cash into items or xp.
No character action in the game world required.
It's a huge difference to people like me, but some people dont' even see it as a difference.
And with several other MMO's going free-to-play: LOTR, D&D etc.
Microtransactons is facing a current problem causing negative feedback toward the system.
Once they do it right, communities will learn to embrace this type of system as it works for everyone rather than for the developer and against players not willing to pay too much for the game.
I could write an entire book on the advantages to Free-to-Play with microtransactions, how its being done wrong, how we could incorporate it in MMO's when done right and other deciding factors in why people want (or should want) microtransactions in games, but this video does it all too well for me: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/3689-Microtransactions
I think the future of MMOs is in ArenaNet's model.
Buy the game. Play it forever. Optional fluff.
But first we need to realize it.
Realize it did not work and spend the last 6 years designing the game from scratch and promising the world. The world is not free and wishing it was does not change that fact.
These games run on money and they will come up with ways to make you spend that money. If you guys are willing to accept F2P taking over then more power to you. When they all go F2P is probably the day I stop playing MMORPG's
I think the future of MMOs is in ArenaNet's model.
Buy the game. Play it forever. Optional fluff.
But first we need to realize it.
Realize it did not work and spend the last 6 years designing the game from scratch and promising the world. The world is not free and wishing it was does not change that fact.
These games run on money and they will come up with ways to make you spend that money. If you guys are willing to accept F2P taking over then more power to you. When they all go F2P is probably the day I stop playing MMORPG's
The first time in a while someone brings up a topic of necessary discussion rather than an issue that has been discussed over and over again.
P2P IS coming to an end. Embrace it.
Microtransactions are the future of MMO's.
I don't think WoW is going to end any time soon, and when it does, more than likely there will be a replacement. Once WoW is gone, NO ONE will ever go after that market?
We're talking BILLIONS of dollars. SOMEONE will want that money.
The first time in a while someone brings up a topic of necessary discussion rather than an issue that has been discussed over and over again.
P2P IS coming to an end. Embrace it.
Microtransactions are the future of MMO's.
I don't think WoW is going to end any time soon, and when it does, more than likely there will be a replacement. Once WoW is gone, NO ONE will ever go after that market?
We're talking BILLIONS of dollars. SOMEONE will want that money.
Yeah I agree. In fact, I really think the only reason that the F2P market is so successful right now is that no game seems to be able to compete with WoW in the P2P market. So you have the choice to either go head to head with WoW in P2P, or go for a different market with F2P.
The big difference is ebay sales of gold or items, are items that are created by characters playing the game.
Whether you sell the item to another playr or not, it was still created by a player, playing the game.
So? When the eBay stuff first started during the EQ days, it violated the EULA no matter what the reasoning was. SOE fought against it and pushed eBay to pull auctions, and everything. They got flamed for it by people who swore up and down that they had every damn right to sell their characters, items, etc. since they'd worked for it, so they should profit from it.
Is it any surprise that the game developers finally just looked at the market and decided to get a piece of the action instead of just letting all that money pass them by?
Also, how is what you're describing any different from what Blizzard is going to do with D3, or with the cash shops and player exchanges that exist now? I don't see it. The only difference now is that the developers are getting a cut of the money instead of seeing it all change hands outside their reach.
Global Agenda had a nice model for their system before they went f2p entirely (I haven't played since then due to having just put together my new computer after my kiddo destroyed the other one)
They made it so that you could pay 14 dollars a month or 30 bucks for 3 months of a booster pack, you didn't have to buy it, totally optional and there was no subscription though at first, before the f2p thing, you actually did have to buy the game.
You got free tokens every night that you could only get through pvp or pve (not stuff that could be traded or sold to other players) and it was required to buy any and all epic gear from the vendors, also, the booster doubled the exp you received while you played while you were leveling up.
That was a nice model, it going f2p just made it easier for new people to come in and start playing, i looked at the site recently and the same booster packs are being sold so you can still have the f2p experience while only paying as much or less than what you would for a p2p game.
My problem with cash shop items is that they make you have to buy things like bank space and bag space for ridiculous amounts of real money AND they compound the fact by making it so that you are constantly littered with items (Runes of Magic and their stupid runes for example). If it was feasible to do it a different way or make the pricing comparable to what p2p games are currently selling their games for people would be shocked and awed into spending that kinda cash to play the game, infact.. if they made it so that you could spend under or around 15 dollars a month for basic stuff without breaking a sweat it would be more than worth it to pay into the game.
Every pay to play example I've seen is pretty rife with awful greed, with the exceptions of GA and possibly requiem bloodymare (i haven't played the latter in two years, a lot could have changed). I don't mind spending 100-200 bucks a month on games, I'm a pretty heavy gamer and mmos are not the only thing I love to 'waste' my money on. I have the xbox360/ps3/wii and i have an arcade stand game (capcom vs marvel and capcom vs snk, my hubby's favorites) However, even with my gratuitous expenditures for games I can easily go overboard on a single f2p game just getting the basics like a mount, bags and some exp items(i don't normally get these but one time... I played Rohan:blood feud and NOONE would group with you if you didn't have them, really pressured by your 'friends' to be stocked with at least one for mindless grindfests).
I like and hate micro-transactions, on xbox live i absolutely adore them because i get to get bonus material for old games I really loved and hated that they were finished.. I also love trying new indie games like Rainbow Runner to which I'm addicted. On mmos though, some regulations need to be put in place, something similar to Global Agenda's ideal where comparable pricing to a pay to play fixture could be there for people who do want to pay but not crippling to those who don't. Runes of Magic is the leading reason why I tread cautiously with f2p mmos, you have to spend like 70 real dollars to buy their biggest adventure pack and my rule of thumb is if what your game is selling is more expensive than what you can micro-charge meaning you have to make two or more transactions to buy something from their shop, that game's a no-no.
The big difference is ebay sales of gold or items, are items that are created by characters playing the game.
Whether you sell the item to another playr or not, it was still created by a player, playing the game.
So? When the eBay stuff first started during the EQ days, it violated the EULA no matter what the reasoning was. SOE fought against it and pushed eBay to pull auctions, and everything. They got flamed for it by people who swore up and down that they had every damn right to sell their characters, items, etc. since they'd worked for it, so they should profit from it.
Is it any surprise that the game developers finally just looked at the market and decided to get a piece of the action instead of just letting all that money pass them by?
Also, how is what you're describing any different from what Blizzard is going to do with D3, or with the cash shops and player exchanges that exist now? I don't see it. The only difference now is that the developers are getting a cut of the money instead of seeing it all change hands outside their reach.
One game is fun for me to play, the other is not.
Its' not rimportant for you to "see it". If you think both types of games are fun, then enjoy them and play them.
I think the future of MMOs is in ArenaNet's model.
Buy the game. Play it forever. Optional fluff.
But first we need to realize it.
Realize it did not work and spend the last 6 years designing the game from scratch and promising the world. The world is not free and wishing it was does not change that fact.
These games run on money and they will come up with ways to make you spend that money. If you guys are willing to accept F2P taking over then more power to you. When they all go F2P is probably the day I stop playing MMORPG's
Consumers are too greedy for it to work. The percentage of people willing to Pay to Win or Pay for More, is too great for ArenaNet's model to work for everyone.
The second a company realises it can sell more of it's game for more money, it will, because consumers lap it up and throw the money at them.
In a Capitalist world, the consumer drives everything.
Comments
Businesses are figuring out that people are retarded when it comes to money.
lay down a huge one time fee and people rage.
Nickle and dime them for 5x more money over a longer period and people somehow equate that to being cheaper.
It started with iTunes. $.99 for a song. 500 songs = $500. And people were okay with this (obviously some were hit with sticker shock at the first of the month when their statement came in, but while they were making $1 purchases, they were none the wiser)
Many gamers are even worse when i comes to money. This is prevalent in consoles and is slowly making its way to PC users. Pay $60 for a game, $50/yr for service, then $50+ for DLC.
A friend of mine balked at the cost of RIFT ("I have to buy the game, THEN pay a monthly fee on top of it!?"), but had no problem blowing $150 over 5 months on League of Legends.
people love to finance stuff. To them it seems cheaper.
They will kill the games for most of us, but nevertheless they will make more money...
I am still wayting for the pay for content gamemodel... Play for free but there is an access fee for new zones and areas. But then without the typically itemshop that comes with DnD online, Lotro, and the new EQ2 qnd AoC models.
Or even better, you pay the box, and for all content patches (not nerfbat patches, but real content patches) and no sub at all. This guarantees that the devs will have to concentrate on adding great content.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I think that good F2P games *can* exist. I just haven't really seen any yet... I've heard League of Legends is doing well though?
I think the business model itself is great. It's unfortunate that most companies abuse it though, which means they are in it for a quick cash grab before their poor management crashes the game into the ground. Yes, there are "pay2win" games out there and they don't last long, because people get tired of that system and even the people who paid to win will get bored when they no longer have any free players to use their paid weapons against.
I think the best system is a f2p model based on points that you purchase. These points can be spent buying vanity or convenience items from the shop, or they can be used to buy other player's in-game goods. This actually does two things:
1. It lets players who can't afford the game, not only play the game for free, but earn in-game stuff that they sell for cash points which allows them to buy cash shop items without ever investing a dollar into the game itself
2. It creates more incentive for people to buy points with real money, as you not only can buy cash shop items, but also in-game items as well.
Now some might say that it's the equivalent of "paying 2 win" when you can just buy in-game items for cash. But here's the thing... those items being bought are just normal in-game items that can be earned without paying any money. So there's no advantage there, only convenience.
Paying players get what they want, while also helping cover the cost of free players.
Free players don't get pushed out by "pay2win" players with cash shop only weapons and upgrades, and can also even earn their own cash points through hard work in-game.
It's a win-win in my opinion.
Thrones Online - Current Online Tactical RPG in development
And I love the people that just rail on about the virtues of F2P. In their quest for something "free" and by embracing this model gamers have egged developers on and have now been trained to accept the fact that apparently its okay for people to drop 600 bucks on a computer game so they can be "competitive". But thats okay I can still play my gimped character for FREE!! FREE !! did you hear me man its FREE! Paying 15 bucks for a game that I actually really liked was putting me in the poor house!
Gamers have fallen for this hook line and sinker. Come back and see me when you finally find a F2P game that you REALLY do like and want to play for longer than the three months it takes most people to burn out on F2P games, Come back to me crying when you suddenly realize your now that guy that has to drop 600 bucks on a game to get everything he wants.
You got it man. "Free" to play is successful because people hate to do math and can't see the big picture. Give me $60 to play forever? No way! Play for free, but pay about $3 a day to buy goodies? Sure! I mean, it's really crazy how people's psychology is, there is just some aversion to big numbers. Why do you think a $50 item is priced $49.99?
People also don't seem to get that what there paying for may be a bit of a scam. For example, if I told someone that a developer intentionally made parts of their game a horrible grind, but you can pay $60 to skip the grind, you would think that's horrible. But well, what do you think exp potions are? If the developers didn't make the game grindy, there would be no need for exp potions because the game would actually be fun. People wouldn't want to skip it.
I made a facetious poll that basically asked players if they would like a business model where a game was made to be really grindy, but they could pay differing amoutns of money to skip parts of the grind. The sums would be paid flat out, like $80 up front to skip 75% of the grindy content. As expected, over 80% of respondants hated this business model.
But really, all I did was present the F2P paradigm in a way that didn't try to deceive the consumer. In the end, we learn that when you tell people that you're going to f$ck them, they're not happy. But when you seduce them into being f$cked, they go along with it just fine.
Here's the poll if anyone is interested: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/323722/New-business-model-for-MMORPGs-Poll.html
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I play Runes of Magic and for a few bucks got a couple mounts and my house furnished. Does that mean I'm paying to win? Who am I competing against? I just PVE and keep to myself. Considering that I've played for like 2 years now (since launch) that might work out to something like $2.00 per month. Whoah, that's wicked expensive.
Bad Frogster... bad! *grin*
Not all games are scams.
Then your issue isn't with the F2P business model in general, just the fact that a lot of F2P games make it so you need to spend a ton of money to stay competitive.
It isn't impossible that a F2P game could be made where you only need to spend the $15-$20 per month to stay competitive instead of the $50+ that most games at the moment get up to. But I agree that it's totally wrong to develop a game with intentional grind, knowing that players will want to buy a way to skip that grind. That's just bad game design and looking to make a quick buck.
Thrones Online - Current Online Tactical RPG in development
This is accurate for me. I may have been a bit overzealous in labeling ALL F2P games as having the P2W and deceptive tactics that I outlined in my previous post. I have no issue with F2P games that use microtransactions responsibly. I DO have an issue when microtransactions are used in any of the following ways:
1. Pay to win - Allowing players to spend money to gain some kind of real advantage over other players in PvP.
2. Double Dipping - Combining heavy microtransactions with a subscription (minor MTs are okay, or MTs that sell NEW content).
3. Pay to skip - Allowing players to pay money to skip playing parts of the game or be "fast-tracked" through. EXP potions fall into this category. I dislike this because it encourages developers to make their games grindy. They are basically charging you to skip portions of the game that they made deliberately bad.
4. Exorbitant prices - Offering items like a monocle for $60 is ridiculous. Items in a cash shop should be priced fairly as we would expect from the current pricing model that MMORPGs have ($15 for subs, $30-60 for a box).
5. Pay to maintain - I don't know if any MMORPGs are doing this, but CCGs like Magic used a tactic where they would release new card sets every now and then that had advantages that could only be countered by buying the new card set. So even if you had a killer deck with the original Magic cards, you would have to buy cards from the new card set when it came out to remain competitive.
I could easily see MMORPGs doing this by releasing new skills, weapons, items or whatever every month or so that you would need to purchase to remain competitive. At this point, the game becomes little more than a deceptive subscription.
6. Disproportionate nickeling and diming - If I'm a developer/publisher and I have a new game I want to market I have a few choices. I can either sell the game as a whole for $60 or so, or I can carve it up into a bunch of different pieces and then let people play the "core" game for free, but purchase the separate pieces as they desire.
If the combined price of the separate pieces (i.e. the full game) adds up to $60 that's fine, even $80 or so would be fine to compensate for the fact that people have more flexibility in their purchasing. But when the combined price of the pieces adds up to $200? That's messed up. This is basically an attempt to trick people into spending more money using the denomination effect.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I agree with all your points. Though #3 (pay to skip) I am sort of on the fence about. I think that as long as the game isn't grindy, then having something like EXP potions are okay. The reasoning behind this is that even if your game is super fun to play, there might still be elements of having to spend a lot of time getting to a particular point in the game. Someone who doesn't have a lot of time to play the game could then pay to catch up with friends or just other players in general. It would be more of a convenience thing and less of a "we have to buy EXP potions because the grind is too much" thing.
It's not really hurting anyone if someone pays to jump ahead. It's the same thing as paying for endgame weapons. Either way, the person *could* have earned them through playing the game. They just didn't want to spend that time or couldn't spend that time. This really only hurts people who value time played in game over everything else. Which I think is a silly notion. Just because you play a game 10 hours a day doesn't mean you deserve to have stuff everyone else can't get without doing the same. Especially in a f2p game where you have people who play the game for 10 hours a day and never give the company a dime. Hence the need to let people spend money to get to that same level, so they are paying for these people who never want to pay for a game.
As for #6, well it can be argued that eventually more stuff would be added to the shop... so you would have to consider that as an "expansion" to the game. It's not fair to say that you could buy everything in the cash shop for the price of a single game, because there might be more content than would have been in a single game.
I guess this is all just speculation though... Right now most F2P games are pretty terrible and are breaking a lot of these no-no rules. But I do think that a F2P business model can work well, if done right. I don't think it's fair to shun an entire business model based on the current trend of things.
People also need to realize that when they complain about having to pay more than $50-$60 to play an MMO... most of these people are probably playing the game for hundreds of hours. That's a whole lot of value if you ask me. Considering most offilne games nowadays give you maybe 30-40 hours of play time (if even that) and cost $50-$60. You end up beating the game (or getting bored with it) and not playing it again. But with an MMO you might play it for years. You might play it 40 hours a WEEK. So to complain about having to pay $100+ to play an MMO that you are getting hundreds of hours of entertainment from, falls on deaf ears to me.
Thrones Online - Current Online Tactical RPG in development
They also told the companies they were fine with RMT by using online sites like eBay to sell their characters, accounts, and items, then bitching about the Evil Corporate Empires taking away their god-given rights to sell their property online however they damn well wished because they'd bought the discs and owned the game and therefore owned their characters.
Cash shops and legal RMT in MMO's did not just pop up out of nowhere. They are a response to a the gamers themselves, by their own actions, showing that they would pay the extra money. Western compaines looked at all the money they were losing to eBay and to the black market, and they looked at the cash shop systems that were popular in Asia, and they adjusted accordingly.
Yeah the problem I have with "pay to skip" isn't with the fact that people can complete the game faster than me, this doesn't really bother me much. Unless they are getting some huge advantage over me by completing the game quicker...then it's kind of pay to win. But anyway, what bothers me is that it gives developers incentives to make bad games.
If you're intending to make money from pay to skip items like exp potions, then it's really in your interest to make the game long and grindy.
And for #6, the nickel and diming thing, I was talking about at release. If all of the MT items for a game at release cost $200-$300 dollars then I think it's kind of a rip off. If the game has been out for a few years, then that's not a fair comparison.
I also agree that $50-$60 for an MMO + a subscription fee is a fair price. I never had an issue with this. My only issue is that companies sometimes try a "stealth" price hike by using microtransactions. So long as I'm paying similar to what I was paying before with an MT game, I would be okay.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
First i understand your aggrivation, however, the model for subs isn't much better and heres why, you claim that people don't have time to grind out the items they need, well WoW has that model. you have to run x number of dungeons to A: wait for a drop thats usually NOT going to drop for you because of their failed random item algorithm B: grind about 100 heroic dungeons to get anything of value from their point system C: finally get enough to get into a raid situation where you have to run 50 raids to do it all over again and grind out a raid-only rep faction to get something of value from them. Rift, WoW, EQ2 (before the shop) etc etc all have this model and they are all sub only.
Second, not every game has a P2Win scenario. Lotro comes to mind on this point but then again they are THE most successful western implementation of the F2P model something that every F2P model should follow in the future. They just plain keep making money. I love their model because I can play for free, earn points to spend on anything including mounts, zone unlocks for free. I can buy things ocassionally however they do NOT sell end game gear thus destroying your idea that F2P = P2Win because unlike ALLODs and games like that you can't buy the items you need to improve your toons output of DPS it has to be earned. There are enhancements for gear like the legacies (enchants really) for legendary gear and you can buy those yes HOWEVER nothing there is NOTHING in the store that i didn't get for my end game gear from doing Volume III epic solo quests. I literally got epics from those quests which is a great model to follow.
Yes there are pleanty of games that do this, i just experienced two this week that stated they were F2P models and turned out to be anything BUT, however claiming that the entire western gaming dev community is doing the same thing is short sighted and gives us insight into the deep seeded ignorance you have about how this industry is ACTUALLY playing out.
If you look at the revenue numbers, gamers know and the companies that are playing P2Win models aren't making as much as Lotro and others who follow Lotro's model. Trust me they're marketing departments have taken notice, it's only a matter of time if the people in charge are smart.
It's a service that caters to a valid market.
There are two kinds of players in the F2P game.
There's the "free" players. They won't stick around for more than 3 months no matter what. So by the time the grind hits and it's time to pay cash or get REALLY bored, they are leaving. But they were leaving anyway. That's their attention span.
Then there's the player that likes digital shopping. THey love deciding which digital item to buy next. Heck, it's more fun for them to purchase a digital item than actually play the game iwth that item.
you've seen how popular QVC is. Some people love to shop.
PLUS, they get to feel superior, because they have cool stuff, and the newbs that don't pay, don't.
So it satisfies both of those players, and the developers make money.
It's a win for everyone that likes F2P games.
The big difference is ebay sales of gold or items, are items that are created by characters playing the game.
Whether you sell the item to another playr or not, it was still created by a player, playing the game.
Cash shop games turn cash into items or xp.
No character action in the game world required.
It's a huge difference to people like me, but some people dont' even see it as a difference.
It's all subjective.
What he said; but better.
FEEL THE FULL
FREE-TO-FLAME
FANTASY.
Realize it did not work and spend the last 6 years designing the game from scratch and promising the world. The world is not free and wishing it was does not change that fact.
These games run on money and they will come up with ways to make you spend that money. If you guys are willing to accept F2P taking over then more power to you. When they all go F2P is probably the day I stop playing MMORPG's
Amen to that!
Let's party like it is 1863!
Yeah I agree. In fact, I really think the only reason that the F2P market is so successful right now is that no game seems to be able to compete with WoW in the P2P market. So you have the choice to either go head to head with WoW in P2P, or go for a different market with F2P.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
So? When the eBay stuff first started during the EQ days, it violated the EULA no matter what the reasoning was. SOE fought against it and pushed eBay to pull auctions, and everything. They got flamed for it by people who swore up and down that they had every damn right to sell their characters, items, etc. since they'd worked for it, so they should profit from it.
Is it any surprise that the game developers finally just looked at the market and decided to get a piece of the action instead of just letting all that money pass them by?
Also, how is what you're describing any different from what Blizzard is going to do with D3, or with the cash shops and player exchanges that exist now? I don't see it. The only difference now is that the developers are getting a cut of the money instead of seeing it all change hands outside their reach.
Global Agenda had a nice model for their system before they went f2p entirely (I haven't played since then due to having just put together my new computer after my kiddo destroyed the other one)
They made it so that you could pay 14 dollars a month or 30 bucks for 3 months of a booster pack, you didn't have to buy it, totally optional and there was no subscription though at first, before the f2p thing, you actually did have to buy the game.
You got free tokens every night that you could only get through pvp or pve (not stuff that could be traded or sold to other players) and it was required to buy any and all epic gear from the vendors, also, the booster doubled the exp you received while you played while you were leveling up.
That was a nice model, it going f2p just made it easier for new people to come in and start playing, i looked at the site recently and the same booster packs are being sold so you can still have the f2p experience while only paying as much or less than what you would for a p2p game.
My problem with cash shop items is that they make you have to buy things like bank space and bag space for ridiculous amounts of real money AND they compound the fact by making it so that you are constantly littered with items (Runes of Magic and their stupid runes for example). If it was feasible to do it a different way or make the pricing comparable to what p2p games are currently selling their games for people would be shocked and awed into spending that kinda cash to play the game, infact.. if they made it so that you could spend under or around 15 dollars a month for basic stuff without breaking a sweat it would be more than worth it to pay into the game.
Every pay to play example I've seen is pretty rife with awful greed, with the exceptions of GA and possibly requiem bloodymare (i haven't played the latter in two years, a lot could have changed). I don't mind spending 100-200 bucks a month on games, I'm a pretty heavy gamer and mmos are not the only thing I love to 'waste' my money on. I have the xbox360/ps3/wii and i have an arcade stand game (capcom vs marvel and capcom vs snk, my hubby's favorites) However, even with my gratuitous expenditures for games I can easily go overboard on a single f2p game just getting the basics like a mount, bags and some exp items(i don't normally get these but one time... I played Rohan:blood feud and NOONE would group with you if you didn't have them, really pressured by your 'friends' to be stocked with at least one for mindless grindfests).
I like and hate micro-transactions, on xbox live i absolutely adore them because i get to get bonus material for old games I really loved and hated that they were finished.. I also love trying new indie games like Rainbow Runner to which I'm addicted. On mmos though, some regulations need to be put in place, something similar to Global Agenda's ideal where comparable pricing to a pay to play fixture could be there for people who do want to pay but not crippling to those who don't. Runes of Magic is the leading reason why I tread cautiously with f2p mmos, you have to spend like 70 real dollars to buy their biggest adventure pack and my rule of thumb is if what your game is selling is more expensive than what you can micro-charge meaning you have to make two or more transactions to buy something from their shop, that game's a no-no.
I'm not racist, I hate everyone equally.
One game is fun for me to play, the other is not.
Its' not rimportant for you to "see it". If you think both types of games are fun, then enjoy them and play them.
Consumers are too greedy for it to work. The percentage of people willing to Pay to Win or Pay for More, is too great for ArenaNet's model to work for everyone.
The second a company realises it can sell more of it's game for more money, it will, because consumers lap it up and throw the money at them.
In a Capitalist world, the consumer drives everything.