If the argument against F2P is that it attracts a poor community, then I am glad the complainers will not be playing. The community in this game is already looking better if all of you promise to keep your word and stay out of it.
Personally, I don't understand the hate some people display for F2P games. If you don't like it, simply don't play. Spend all the money you want to on the few B2P or P2P that are around and share your negativity with them. Their communities will be oh so better for it.
As far as this game is concerned, it has been clearly stated numerous times it will be a F2P game. Unless the devs decide to make an astounding about face after they have already taken money from backers, no amount of criticizing will change that.
To the OP, I don't feel that having a subscription means that you can escape kids. There must be some people under 18 playing WoW or EVE. I don't think most kids have a lot of trouble getting $10 here and there from their parents if they can afford it. I know my parents would have been really happy to pay my sub fee and keep me out of their hair. They would have used it to get me to do whatever they wanted. Also, I have found myself grouped with some very well behaved, mature, and capable young people before.
It is a stretch to think that a sub will keep trolls away. Trolls are inescapable. Even in real life. The best thing anyone can do is learn to deal with them. /ignore works almost all the time for me. At best, a subscription fee would limit their number. It would also limit the number of people that even try the game. With how the MMO industry is now, I am not sure if I would be willing to lose good players willing to try my game in hope of keeping trolls away. An ignore command and a diligent CSR staff is the best way to handle the trolls, imo.
A MMO tourist can end up being a loyal player if they become involved in the game and community. It is up to the devs to make a game they become interested in playing regularly. I think a lot of people would agree that the best way to get someone to try something is to let them try it for free. I know I have eaten a lot of free samples at the local grocery store and then wound up buying something I had no intention of buying. Sure, I understand there could be a free trial, but you still have an initial purchase or subscription that could drive people away if you are B2P or P2P. Especially with the vast majority of games being F2P now.
If feeling exclusive is what you truly desire, I am betting the cash shop is where you want to be. Please, buy all the fancy clothes and accessories you can so that you stand out from the crowd. The game will be better off because of your purchases. That is assuming they will use some of that money to keep it interesting and entertaining with what you have mentioned.
The best model IMHO would be f2p without item shop, that gives you about 1/3 of the game, and then sub for the rest.
It's hard to describe why I support sub games. For starters, it doesn't make any kind of logical sense to me that people can pay real world money in return for items in a virtual world. It just makes the virtual world feel cheap and unimmersive. It also reminds me that the people making said game are doing it for money, not to make a good game. As soon as a developer puts money above making a good and fun game, the game will suffer due to attemps of making more and more money. An item shop does exactly that, it reminds the players constantly that they are playing a product designed to make money, not a game.
Money should be secondary after designing a good game. If you let your greed start affecting the players' enjoyment of your game, then your game can only go downhill.
The 2 different approaches are, do you make a game with the main goal to make money (Neverwinter), or do you make a game with the main goal to be a fun game, and make money as a result of players enjoying your game.
F2P games tend to take the first option, whether or not it was originally the plan. Mainly because everyone can get into the game without any barriers, so you can get away with a lower quality game, and the amount of money you make per person is still high, even when your game isn't as good as a P2P game. Neverwinter is profitable. Does that mean that it is a good MMO? Most people I have talked to consider it garbage, but they still make money because there are people who spend 200+ dollars. If 10% of the population pays development costs, does it mean the 90% are enjoying the game (for more than 2 weeks)?
F2p is popular because it is easier to get away with making a low quality product, due to the lack of entry barriers. The reason most of the recent P2P games convert to f2p is because their quality was on par with f2p games to begin with. Garbage that most people get bored of in 1-3 months. For a P2P game to be successful, it needs to acheive higher quality standards. It is not that the model is bad, it is the developers who are unable to make their game good enough.
At the end of the day, that's all it comes down to. Whenever a dev comes out and says that their game will be P2P, it has one of the 2 meanings:
1) they think their game is better than f2p titles, while it really isn't
2) the game really is better than f2p titles (not the case with any of the recent MMOs)
Repop sounds good enough to be P2P. I think it comes down to the fact that F2P is a safer option for a small indie dev.
I think the ideal model for a substantial MMORPG is a subscription based one
Unfortunately (for you anyway, I prefer B2P), more companies are moving away from subscriptions all the time. What's really left that has stayed a sub game for more than a year or two? WoW and EVE. Nothing else stays that way, even if it starts that way.
Well thats because most the games being released in todays industry are pathetic excuses at console style rpg's trying to add multiplayer support to them and calling them MMORPG's. F2P isnt a solution, its a crutch. If they started to make good MMORPG's again and stop hanging onto WOW's coat tails they will be ok.
People got into the fad of F2P, doesnt make it better. Just the only way yo keep people playing a mediocre game.
And for all those saying an Indie game company will have it rough starting out, i disagree. Most the major game companies today were once indie and many of the major ones only started out with a handful of people if that. But their passion for the game, content, material, and features led to some great games. Now theya re just greedy and want your money via cash shop. Have you noticed that F2P games get updated almost every 2 weeks? Good? No....... its usualy updating the cash shop garbage to milk more money from people that have to have that 1 elite item from a "lucky" box with only a 3% chance of winning it.
In a F2P game you can easily surpass the amount of money invested into a monthly fee easily. Many people drop thousands of dollars, rush thru everything, and then jump to a new game. No longevity or meaning in mmorpg's any more.
Which model is best? Not sure, but i do know the creativity, passion, and just a great mmorpg hasnt been released in 6+ years to decide that with an open mind.
MMORPG's broke away from your average rpg game to expand on this and give players the ability to be the world, only to be swamped by those very same people years later that took our world via whinning and being lazy and now mmorpg's you have the ability to be a closet with eye candy, fluff, and a 2 week long story.
Originally posted by Mkilbride Agreed, in all honestly...I'd prefer the game be like 19.99$ box + 10$ monthly.
It is an indie game and they don't want to risk going P2P. I can understand that. it is very easy to tell others what to do when your own money is not on the line.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
Originally posted by MkilbrideAgreed, in all honestly...I'd prefer the game be like 19.99$ box + 10$ monthly.
It is an indie game and they don't want to risk going P2P. I can understand that. it is very easy to tell others what to do when your own money is not on the line.
Yup. "It's not my money, my livelihood or my game, but I'd do this because of my personal biases against what the developer is doing."
Smaller, indie games need a lot of people to drive "buzz" about the game. The more people they attract, the more likely they are to stick around. F2P is one way to get a lot of people in the door. Plus, they won't be able to get a big initial cash offering and shut the game down like some other scifi game I could mention.
** ** **
They could also spend half their budget on marketing, but they probably need that money for the game's development.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Originally posted by Mkilbride Agreed, in all honestly...I'd prefer the game be like 19.99$ box + 10$ monthly.
It is an indie game and they don't want to risk going P2P. I can understand that. it is very easy to tell others what to do when your own money is not on the line.
SOE - indie company in 1996, in 1999 they released EQ which was a sub game, and still exists today. As do many of their games.
Though blizzard was not an indie company in 2004 with the release of WOW, it had no experience in that field. Yet released their first MMORPG and knocked the entire industry upside down.
CCP was an indie company when they released their very first mmorpg......... eve online which has a steady population.
NC Soft was an indie company when it first created Lineage a year after being founded, it lasted until 2012, but NC Soft has also made some top rated games since then.
You can add another dozen on here, but you get my point. All these companies were indie and started P2P and have expanded and made more games since. Its not about the pay model, its about the quality of the game.... thats whats missing now. And why no P2P game will make it if they follow the same path.
But the repop.....is not your average cookie cutter wow clone, and far from trivial when it comes to things a mmorpg must have to survive. They are selling themselves short on this, i think it would do great as a P2P game. Cash shops turn me off, they can be taken advantage of and ruin a great game as it has been done several times.
My opinion? I'd gladly subscribe for $45 bucks a month (or more, just like I did with SWG) to play this game if it delivers. But from all I see in the MMO industry, subscription models aren't as profitable for the company as "free".
So I'll take the proverbial "good with the bad" if it helps ensure a game's success.
Originally posted by Mkilbride Agreed, in all honestly...I'd prefer the game be like 19.99$ box + 10$ monthly.
It is an indie game and they don't want to risk going P2P. I can understand that. it is very easy to tell others what to do when your own money is not on the line.
SOE - indie company in 1996, in 1999 they released EQ which was a sub game, and still exists today. As do many of their games.
Though blizzard was not an indie company in 2004 with the release of WOW, it had no experience in that field. Yet released their first MMORPG and knocked the entire industry upside down.
CCP was an indie company when they released their very first mmorpg......... eve online which has a steady population.
NC Soft was an indie company when it first created Lineage a year after being founded, it lasted until 2012, but NC Soft has also made some top rated games since then.
You can add another dozen on here, but you get my point. All these companies were indie and started P2P and have expanded and made more games since. Its not about the pay model, its about the quality of the game.... thats whats missing now. And why no P2P game will make it if they follow the same path.
But the repop.....is not your average cookie cutter wow clone, and far from trivial when it comes to things a mmorpg must have to survive. They are selling themselves short on this, i think it would do great as a P2P game. Cash shops turn me off, they can be taken advantage of and ruin a great game as it has been done several times.
I think those dates pretty much answer your own question as to why pure P2P models are not viable in 2013 anymore. Gamers have changed, general attitudes and expectations have changed. There has been big shift in how people look at the gaming and whole P2P model now.
Lets not compare what was possible for Indie companies to do with P2P model say in 1999 to 2013.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
Originally posted by Mkilbride Agreed, in all honestly...I'd prefer the game be like 19.99$ box + 10$ monthly.
It is an indie game and they don't want to risk going P2P. I can understand that. it is very easy to tell others what to do when your own money is not on the line.
SOE - indie company in 1996, in 1999 they released EQ which was a sub game, and still exists today. As do many of their games.
Though blizzard was not an indie company in 2004 with the release of WOW, it had no experience in that field. Yet released their first MMORPG and knocked the entire industry upside down.
CCP was an indie company when they released their very first mmorpg......... eve online which has a steady population.
NC Soft was an indie company when it first created Lineage a year after being founded, it lasted until 2012, but NC Soft has also made some top rated games since then.
You can add another dozen on here, but you get my point. All these companies were indie and started P2P and have expanded and made more games since. Its not about the pay model, its about the quality of the game.... thats whats missing now. And why no P2P game will make it if they follow the same path.
But the repop.....is not your average cookie cutter wow clone, and far from trivial when it comes to things a mmorpg must have to survive. They are selling themselves short on this, i think it would do great as a P2P game. Cash shops turn me off, they can be taken advantage of and ruin a great game as it has been done several times.
I think those dates pretty much answer your own question as to why pure P2P models are not viable in 2013 anymore. Gamers have changed, general attitudes and expectations have changed. There has been big shift in how people look at the gaming and whole P2P model now.
Lets not compare what was possible for Indie companies to do with P2P model say in 1999 to 2013.
Didnt have a question
But yes you can compare older games to todays games, and get a trend on why they arent doing well. The games have become worse. People want their games fasta nd easy like console games, thus killing the longevity, feeling, and creativity put into games. They are more happy with a small room, no traveling, no crafting, no player based economy, no player driven story, no exploration, no features, no strong game mechanics, and no earning what they have.
Pay model doesnt matter long as the game is solid and draws people into it. Not being able to beat in it 24 hours like a console game and jump to a new one. This is why F2P is more preferred because it costs aton to beta test these poor quality games only to find out you wasted 60$.
No game i have played in 6 years has drawn me into it, only pushed me away. And many feel the same here.
Look at SWTOR as an example, it was to be the greatest most epic mmorpg of the century. What you got was a 2 week long story, eye candy, and your hand held the entire way with most all the major mmorpg features lacking. Its a great console game, but not a great mmorpg. Its also the reason why it lost more subs in record time than any game to date. It had no choice but to go F2P-a crutch, not the solution.
But yes you can compare older games to todays games, and get a trend on why they arent doing well. The games have become worse. People want their games fasta nd easy like console games, thus killing the longevity, feeling, and creativity put into games. They are more happy with a small room, no traveling, no crafting, no player based economy, no player driven story, no exploration, no features, no strong game mechanics, and no earning what they have.
Pay model doesnt matter long as the game is solid and draws people into it. Not being able to beat in it 24 hours like a console game and jump to a new one. This is why F2P is more preferred because it costs aton to beta test these poor quality games only to find out you wasted 60$.
No game i have played in 6 years has drawn me into it, only pushed me away. And many feel the same here.
Look at SWTOR as an example, it was to be the greatest most epic mmorpg of the century. What you got was a 2 week long story, eye candy, and your hand held the entire way with most all the major mmorpg features lacking. Its a great console game, but not a great mmorpg. Its also the reason why it lost more subs in record time than any game to date. It had no choice but to go F2P-a crutch, not the solution.
How about Arch Age? isn't it a sold MMO with solid content and yet it had to go F2P in Asia even before it is released in West.
I keep hearing about these 'quality' and 'solid ' MMOS players will support but i don't see it happening.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
In my opinion, the time of p2p mmorpgs is over. It's certainly over for me. I was playing games, including mmorpgs, since the first text MUDs, and I'm not playing another p2p mmorpg ever again. P2p pushes the designers into making decisions that simply make games not fun, in effort to make people "slow down", like trash mobs, grinding etc.
F2P has its fair share of problems, but for me it's way better than p2p. So if any game company wants me and my demographics (mid thirties, family, job, not looking for "friends" in mmorpgs anymore, tired of p2p shenanigans) playing their games, they will not release p2p titles. This game, apparently, wants.
m not playing another p2p mmorpg ever again. P2p pushes the designers into making decisions that simply make games not fun, in effort to make people "slow down", like trash mobs, grinding etc.
Both f2p and p2p need to keep players playing (which trash mobs have nothing to do with).
P2P games need the content to be good enough to keep people paying
F2P dont have to have good content, but they need to get people to pay for stuff
P2P is better for the players. f2p is better for the company.
I'm curious how this will work myself for a sandbox game that is suppose to be built on a player made economy. If the best items are in the shop, then why buy them off a player?If the best items are from players, then why buy them from the shop?
For an indie title, getting people to try the game is half the battle. You don't have a large marketing budget. You spread through word of mouth. It's much easier to gain players in a free to play title because there is no barrier of entry. If someone tells their friend to try a game, it's easy for them to hop right in and play together.
I agree that for an indie game the hardest part is getting people to come try the game.
However, a free trial (no credit card needed to try) of 1, 2 or 4 weeks (depending on what they feel is needed to get enough of a feel for the game in order to want to buy it) is all that is needed. This can be done just fine with a subscription model.
I do agree with others. I peeked at the website the other day, but didn't have time to really read everything. I was planning on going back this weekend and reading up on the game. Knowing that it is f2p simply means I won't go back and read about it or try it.
I'm not against games being F2P. The problem is that currently every game thinks it HAS to be F2P. Reality is that both models can exist as there are players for both. I personally don't play F2P games, that model is just not what I'm looking for.
I actually think the biggest problem for subscription games was that they insisted on sticking with the pay a box fee for the first month then subscribe, which is a big upfront cost on top of paying continuously. What companies who want to go with the subscription model need to do is launch with a free trial and just a sub cost. That way, just like F2P, a player can jump in and try it before deciding if they want to spend the money on it. I see that to be the biggest barrier to subscription games and new releases keep doing it.
I think an indie company that did a sub with an out the gate 2 week free trial could do just fine as a company and if the game seemed interesting I would certainly try with the intention of subbing up if I enjoyed it.
Originally posted by ktanner3 I'm curious how this will work myself for a sandbox game that is suppose to be built on a player made economy. If the best items are in the shop, then why buy them off a player?If the best items are from players, then why buy them from the shop?
I thought they said that the shop would only have cosmetic and convenience items. Am I misinformed?
In my opinion, the time of p2p mmorpgs is over. It's certainly over for me. I was playing games, including mmorpgs, since the first text MUDs, and I'm not playing another p2p mmorpg ever again. P2p pushes the designers into making decisions that simply make games not fun, in effort to make people "slow down", like trash mobs, grinding etc.
You forgot to mention how F2P pushes designers into making barriers or very slow parts to encourage people to pay for something in the shop that gets them past it or makes it faster.
Make the XP slower so that people buy XP boosts. Make it hard to get from place to place so people buy instant travel. Make good gear tough to find so you buy random chests or increased luck. Etc. etc. etc.
Not sure how you see the sub model forcing developers to slow things down and yet don't see similar problems with F2P.
Originally posted by ktanner3 I'm curious how this will work myself for a sandbox game that is suppose to be built on a player made economy. If the best items are in the shop, then why buy them off a player?If the best items are from players, then why buy them from the shop?
I thought they said that the shop would only have cosmetic and convenience items. Am I misinformed?
I'm not saying whether this game will or won't, but I will say that whenever a company says that line people should go back and look at how many companies have said that is what they will do and at some point switch to more than cosmetic to keep the money coming in.
Originally posted by ktanner3 I'm curious how this will work myself for a sandbox game that is suppose to be built on a player made economy. If the best items are in the shop, then why buy them off a player?If the best items are from players, then why buy them from the shop?
I thought they said that the shop would only have cosmetic and convenience items. Am I misinformed?
You are not misinformed. Nothing in regards to intended content has changed for the cash shop.
Originally posted by YalexyLook at the feature-list of The Repopulation and then tell me that it's not going to be a P2W-game if it isn't subscription based but F2P instead.
Your certainly entitled to your opinion, but our vision from the get go is very much against Pay To Win, which we've stated time and time again. We feel that free players are important to a games success. Because some other developers don't feel that way, the F2P model often gets a bad reputation.
There's really two ways that developers approach free to play.
1) They cater to the paying players and make it difficult enough on the free players that the free players either start spending money or move on to another game. This maximizes the amount of money you make on each player, while not having to foot as much of a bill for players who are not paying as most non-paying customers will find another game. This method often involves a lot of locked content that you can subscribe in order to unlock, and the free to play is a mechanism to get you to subscribe.
2) They view free customers as being important. Not only can they convert into paying customers, but they can bring in other players to the game, some of them who may become paying customers. They understand that while these players may be costing them a tad of money, they may also be making the game more enjoyable for others as they may be friends, family members, etc of paying customers, and because the more players they have the more enjoyable the game will be for those playing (its no fun in a barren world).
We fall into category #2. Your not going to find stats items in the cash shop or require to spend cash to unlock a chest or wear good gear. Too many people make assumptions based on some other game they played which tried to nickel and dime their customers with 200% experience potions, gear for cash, lockboxes that you can buy an unlock for, purchasable rare resources, and making game mechanics stacked so that it's miserable to play without paying. It's true that most F2P games to date fell into category #1, but not all. Because that is the route the majority of developers have taken, players often erroneously assume that's all there is. I think in the coming years we're going to see a lot more developers go to option #2. We're already seeing a lot of games that went with the first option slowly shifting towards #2.
This game was designed as free to play. It's been a free to play title since before the Kickstarter campaign, so there is no reason for anyone to act surprised by this. It was clearly mentioned on the Kickstarter page. For the sake of argument, let's say for a minute we agreed and decided F2P was a bad idea, we wouldn't be able to change the model after it was already a selling point on Kickstarter. Now we certainly don't feel that way, we feel strongly that F2P is the correct approach for Repop. But it's pointless to try to convince us otherwise at this stage, it's in writing. Once you start leaving promises unfulfilled your heading down a slippery slope. The business model isn't something that we took lightly. We put a lot of thought into the direction we wanted to take, what we did and did not want to support as part of the memberships and cash shop, and at our overall approach to not create a huge gap between free and paying customers.
My advice for anyone who is against the idea of free to play would be wait until the game opens, and then make your judgments.
Too many developers in the past have made claims, that their cashshop won't have any influence in PvE or PvP and is only there for fluff and convenience. History so far has shown, that not a single F2P-title could live up to this claim.
Because of the history with F2P-titles I'm not even considering downloading the client for a game that is F2P.
And then there's the MMOs that were released as P2P and changed to F2P afterwards. I've played titles like AoC, STO, SWTOR and TSW, but as soon as they announced to change into F2P I left them and never looked back.
F2P simply has a negative touch for people like me, who have no problem spending $15/month as it's pocketchange compared to what I spend for cigarettes each month for example. Or if I spend a night out at the club, I'm spending the money worth of an annual subscription in a single night.
For me it's really simple. Tell me what the game costs, all inclusive, and I'll pay. If there's no fixed price however, then you've lost a possible customer. I simply don't want to bother with microtransactions as this is inconvenient for me.
Except there is this game called Path of Exile that proves your statement wrong. I could provide more examples but you only said one game, and I provided one game that proves you wrong.
for an Indie title (specifically mmo) 15-20$ bucks for a box would be just fine so they can make enough money to justify having a safe, non-ridiculous and decent cash shop. Just because its indie doesnt mean it needs to be rid of any pay wall to enter the game. I would gladly buy the game, as long as it doesnt have a sub.
If i remember correctly this game aims to be a sandbox so as a full free game im sure there will be heavy crafting limitations locked on a cash shop. I prefer free over sub, but like i said, i would be more than happy to support the company with a box price.
For an indie title, getting people to try the game is half the battle. You don't have a large marketing budget. You spread through word of mouth. It's much easier to gain players in a free to play title because there is no barrier of entry. If someone tells their friend to try a game, it's easy for them to hop right in and play together.
It's tough for any game to maintain a healthy audience long-term as a subscription title with so many free options out there these days. The result is games generally sell well, then die off more quickly than they did in the days when there were few options and trying each had a price tag.
Players generally will cancel old subscriptions to try new ones, which takes players out of your world and worsens the experience for everyone else. Free to play titles allow players to play other games, but check in from time to time, which aids the community as a whole.
Many titles now ship with subscription to get their box sales and initial profit, and then switch to free to play later when it's clear that they are hemmoraghing players. The problem in that case is that the perception is then that they are doing poorly which hurts customer opinion. Server merges create a similar problem.
I'm not saying that the subscription model doesn't work. It definitely does. But there is also a reason the bulk of upcoming titles are going the free to play (or the box price and no subscription) route. It's simply a healthier model for most games.
I think a lot of players dislike F2P simply because of the implementations in certain games they have played previously. It is annoying to have paid a box price and subscription for a game, to see it later turn free to play and you notice that you would have spent so much more to unlock all the classes, races or content than if you had just paid the box price and subscription. To see that it's free to play but the only way to unlock everything is to still pay a subscription. Or to find that the only way to play competitively is to spend money.
Those are problems with the implementation though and not the model. Developers are still trying to find what they can and can't do, and some are still trying to nickel and dime players for as much as they can get. That's certainly not the approach being taken with Repop though. We value free players. And the membership options are similar to just a box price with no subscription (with the lower end ones being cheaper). Aside from some skill gain bonus potions (which give a much smaller bonus than in many of the other titles out there), there really won't be any performance gain from cash shop items. You'll be unlocking perks (more bank space, more inventory space, more mission slots, etc), purchasing cosmetic items (purely cosmetic/no stat differences), and the like.
The difference really just comes in how developers perceive free players. A common way early on of treating non-paying players was to make their lives difficult so that they either quit or paid. Some games still use that same approach. But the approach Repop (and numerous other free to play titles) is taking is that free players are valuable to the game. Sure you need paying customers to stay afloat. But when you create a game where only paying customers can play effectively, you drive away free players. And that is a bad thing. Those players add to the community. Maybe one day they turn into a paying customer, maybe not. But maybe they introduce someone else to the game who does. Maybe they have or become friends with players who are and their being around makes the other players happy.
Noone enjoys an empty world. MMOs are about being social. We'd rather have 50,000 players with only 5,000 of them paying than we would to have 5,000 subscribers. And the reality is with free to play, if you build it they will come. Getting a large number of players to try your game isn't difficult with a free to play title. They have nothing to lose except for download time. Free to play gets them in the door, and then it's up to developers to create a product that will keep them there. That's all you can really ask for.
That's not to say free to play is a perfect model. It is more difficult to get rid of problem players without a barrier of entry. But noone likes to use months (or years) of work. The problem players in free to play titles are generally gold spammers and things of that nature. You can circumvent them with ignore commands, report and auto-detection methods. Overall you just have to weigh the bad with the good. And there are more positive things to be gained from free to play than a subscription model for this title.
In regards to problem players... wouldn't it be easier to just for registration and to actually play the game require a Credit Card on your account file as a mandatory requirement, if a player is banned that CC on file is banned and another CC number is required to make another account? People only have a finite number of cards once their banned they can't come back. It would be a good deterrence to such players and nothing would be charged to the card unless you buy something of course but a ID requirement would be a nice thing to have in all future MMOs and a CC is the best solution, I think their would be a small minority of players out there would be against this mostly, paranoid people, kids, and hackers-cheaters.
Also wanted to add 1 CC card only allowed to 1 account so people just cant make multiple accounts to troll or cheat or exploit with.
In regards to problem players... wouldn't it be easier to just for registration and to actually play the game require a Credit Card on your account file as a mandatory requirement, if a player is banned that CC on file is banned and another CC number is required to make another account? People only have a finite number of cards once their banned they can't come back. It would be a good deterrence to such players and nothing would be charged to the card unless you buy something of course but a ID requirement would be a nice thing to have in all future MMOs and a CC is the best solution, I think their would be a small minority of players out there would be against this mostly, paranoid people, kids, and hackers-cheaters.
I don't think it's a terrible idea, it's similar to what a lot of companies have done with their free trials.
The main problem for us though is that it creates a barrier of entry. We don't want players to feel that they have to pay to play. We value free players. Maybe they convert to paying customers later, but either way we like having them in the game. The percentage of problem players is pretty small, so you cut out of a lot of potentially good players to get rid of a much smaller number of problem players. We want EVERYONE to try our game. If they like it keep playing, if they don't move on. But that's hard to do when you force them to enter in credit card details before playing the game. People are wary they are going to get auto-charged after at time period, which some free trials did automatically at the end of trial periods unless you manually cancel. They may be kids who don't want to go through the effort of trying to talk their parents into giving them some money for it if they haven't tried it yet. They might be suspicious of giving out credit card information to a company they aren't familiar with. Maybe they are on a shared computer and don't want to get out a card. Or maybe they are just too lazy to walk to the table and pull out their credit card just to try a game.
Bannings have an effect, even on free players. Sure they can make a new account. But they lose all the time they put in to their character. I think people tend to underestimate how much that affects players actions. The cost of a box or a subscription is probably far less affecting to many players than the loss of days, weeks, or months of time. I don't think it's much of an issue when players have already put time into their characters. If they were going to behave like jerks, they would have done that in a subscription game, as well. You just ban them like you would in one.
The problem players that does not help with are the gold spammers. But there are good solutions for that out there already. Automatic flaggings/bannings, ignore features, report features, auto-ignore, and then more complex and sweeping things like having an option to filter out global chat from non-members in a membership game.
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Help get Camelot Unchained made, a old-school MMORPG, with no hand holding!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/13861848/camelot-unchained
If the argument against F2P is that it attracts a poor community, then I am glad the complainers will not be playing. The community in this game is already looking better if all of you promise to keep your word and stay out of it.
Personally, I don't understand the hate some people display for F2P games. If you don't like it, simply don't play. Spend all the money you want to on the few B2P or P2P that are around and share your negativity with them. Their communities will be oh so better for it.
As far as this game is concerned, it has been clearly stated numerous times it will be a F2P game. Unless the devs decide to make an astounding about face after they have already taken money from backers, no amount of criticizing will change that.
To the OP, I don't feel that having a subscription means that you can escape kids. There must be some people under 18 playing WoW or EVE. I don't think most kids have a lot of trouble getting $10 here and there from their parents if they can afford it. I know my parents would have been really happy to pay my sub fee and keep me out of their hair. They would have used it to get me to do whatever they wanted. Also, I have found myself grouped with some very well behaved, mature, and capable young people before.
It is a stretch to think that a sub will keep trolls away. Trolls are inescapable. Even in real life. The best thing anyone can do is learn to deal with them. /ignore works almost all the time for me. At best, a subscription fee would limit their number. It would also limit the number of people that even try the game. With how the MMO industry is now, I am not sure if I would be willing to lose good players willing to try my game in hope of keeping trolls away. An ignore command and a diligent CSR staff is the best way to handle the trolls, imo.
A MMO tourist can end up being a loyal player if they become involved in the game and community. It is up to the devs to make a game they become interested in playing regularly. I think a lot of people would agree that the best way to get someone to try something is to let them try it for free. I know I have eaten a lot of free samples at the local grocery store and then wound up buying something I had no intention of buying. Sure, I understand there could be a free trial, but you still have an initial purchase or subscription that could drive people away if you are B2P or P2P. Especially with the vast majority of games being F2P now.
If feeling exclusive is what you truly desire, I am betting the cash shop is where you want to be. Please, buy all the fancy clothes and accessories you can so that you stand out from the crowd. The game will be better off because of your purchases. That is assuming they will use some of that money to keep it interesting and entertaining with what you have mentioned.
The best model IMHO would be f2p without item shop, that gives you about 1/3 of the game, and then sub for the rest.
It's hard to describe why I support sub games. For starters, it doesn't make any kind of logical sense to me that people can pay real world money in return for items in a virtual world. It just makes the virtual world feel cheap and unimmersive. It also reminds me that the people making said game are doing it for money, not to make a good game. As soon as a developer puts money above making a good and fun game, the game will suffer due to attemps of making more and more money. An item shop does exactly that, it reminds the players constantly that they are playing a product designed to make money, not a game.
Money should be secondary after designing a good game. If you let your greed start affecting the players' enjoyment of your game, then your game can only go downhill.
The 2 different approaches are, do you make a game with the main goal to make money (Neverwinter), or do you make a game with the main goal to be a fun game, and make money as a result of players enjoying your game.
F2P games tend to take the first option, whether or not it was originally the plan. Mainly because everyone can get into the game without any barriers, so you can get away with a lower quality game, and the amount of money you make per person is still high, even when your game isn't as good as a P2P game. Neverwinter is profitable. Does that mean that it is a good MMO? Most people I have talked to consider it garbage, but they still make money because there are people who spend 200+ dollars. If 10% of the population pays development costs, does it mean the 90% are enjoying the game (for more than 2 weeks)?
F2p is popular because it is easier to get away with making a low quality product, due to the lack of entry barriers. The reason most of the recent P2P games convert to f2p is because their quality was on par with f2p games to begin with. Garbage that most people get bored of in 1-3 months. For a P2P game to be successful, it needs to acheive higher quality standards. It is not that the model is bad, it is the developers who are unable to make their game good enough.
At the end of the day, that's all it comes down to. Whenever a dev comes out and says that their game will be P2P, it has one of the 2 meanings:
1) they think their game is better than f2p titles, while it really isn't
2) the game really is better than f2p titles (not the case with any of the recent MMOs)
Repop sounds good enough to be P2P. I think it comes down to the fact that F2P is a safer option for a small indie dev.
Well thats because most the games being released in todays industry are pathetic excuses at console style rpg's trying to add multiplayer support to them and calling them MMORPG's. F2P isnt a solution, its a crutch. If they started to make good MMORPG's again and stop hanging onto WOW's coat tails they will be ok.
People got into the fad of F2P, doesnt make it better. Just the only way yo keep people playing a mediocre game.
And for all those saying an Indie game company will have it rough starting out, i disagree. Most the major game companies today were once indie and many of the major ones only started out with a handful of people if that. But their passion for the game, content, material, and features led to some great games. Now theya re just greedy and want your money via cash shop. Have you noticed that F2P games get updated almost every 2 weeks? Good? No....... its usualy updating the cash shop garbage to milk more money from people that have to have that 1 elite item from a "lucky" box with only a 3% chance of winning it.
In a F2P game you can easily surpass the amount of money invested into a monthly fee easily. Many people drop thousands of dollars, rush thru everything, and then jump to a new game. No longevity or meaning in mmorpg's any more.
Which model is best? Not sure, but i do know the creativity, passion, and just a great mmorpg hasnt been released in 6+ years to decide that with an open mind.
MMORPG's broke away from your average rpg game to expand on this and give players the ability to be the world, only to be swamped by those very same people years later that took our world via whinning and being lazy and now mmorpg's you have the ability to be a closet with eye candy, fluff, and a 2 week long story.
It is an indie game and they don't want to risk going P2P. I can understand that. it is very easy to tell others what to do when your own money is not on the line.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
Yup. "It's not my money, my livelihood or my game, but I'd do this because of my personal biases against what the developer is doing."
Smaller, indie games need a lot of people to drive "buzz" about the game. The more people they attract, the more likely they are to stick around. F2P is one way to get a lot of people in the door. Plus, they won't be able to get a big initial cash offering and shut the game down like some other scifi game I could mention.
** ** **
They could also spend half their budget on marketing, but they probably need that money for the game's development.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
SOE - indie company in 1996, in 1999 they released EQ which was a sub game, and still exists today. As do many of their games.
Though blizzard was not an indie company in 2004 with the release of WOW, it had no experience in that field. Yet released their first MMORPG and knocked the entire industry upside down.
CCP was an indie company when they released their very first mmorpg......... eve online which has a steady population.
NC Soft was an indie company when it first created Lineage a year after being founded, it lasted until 2012, but NC Soft has also made some top rated games since then.
You can add another dozen on here, but you get my point. All these companies were indie and started P2P and have expanded and made more games since. Its not about the pay model, its about the quality of the game.... thats whats missing now. And why no P2P game will make it if they follow the same path.
But the repop.....is not your average cookie cutter wow clone, and far from trivial when it comes to things a mmorpg must have to survive. They are selling themselves short on this, i think it would do great as a P2P game. Cash shops turn me off, they can be taken advantage of and ruin a great game as it has been done several times.
My opinion? I'd gladly subscribe for $45 bucks a month (or more, just like I did with SWG) to play this game if it delivers. But from all I see in the MMO industry, subscription models aren't as profitable for the company as "free".
So I'll take the proverbial "good with the bad" if it helps ensure a game's success.
I think those dates pretty much answer your own question as to why pure P2P models are not viable in 2013 anymore. Gamers have changed, general attitudes and expectations have changed. There has been big shift in how people look at the gaming and whole P2P model now.
Lets not compare what was possible for Indie companies to do with P2P model say in 1999 to 2013.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
Didnt have a question
But yes you can compare older games to todays games, and get a trend on why they arent doing well. The games have become worse. People want their games fasta nd easy like console games, thus killing the longevity, feeling, and creativity put into games. They are more happy with a small room, no traveling, no crafting, no player based economy, no player driven story, no exploration, no features, no strong game mechanics, and no earning what they have.
Pay model doesnt matter long as the game is solid and draws people into it. Not being able to beat in it 24 hours like a console game and jump to a new one. This is why F2P is more preferred because it costs aton to beta test these poor quality games only to find out you wasted 60$.
No game i have played in 6 years has drawn me into it, only pushed me away. And many feel the same here.
Look at SWTOR as an example, it was to be the greatest most epic mmorpg of the century. What you got was a 2 week long story, eye candy, and your hand held the entire way with most all the major mmorpg features lacking. Its a great console game, but not a great mmorpg. Its also the reason why it lost more subs in record time than any game to date. It had no choice but to go F2P-a crutch, not the solution.
How about Arch Age? isn't it a sold MMO with solid content and yet it had to go F2P in Asia even before it is released in West.
I keep hearing about these 'quality' and 'solid ' MMOS players will support but i don't see it happening.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
In my opinion, the time of p2p mmorpgs is over. It's certainly over for me. I was playing games, including mmorpgs, since the first text MUDs, and I'm not playing another p2p mmorpg ever again. P2p pushes the designers into making decisions that simply make games not fun, in effort to make people "slow down", like trash mobs, grinding etc.
F2P has its fair share of problems, but for me it's way better than p2p. So if any game company wants me and my demographics (mid thirties, family, job, not looking for "friends" in mmorpgs anymore, tired of p2p shenanigans) playing their games, they will not release p2p titles. This game, apparently, wants.
It's that simple.
Both f2p and p2p need to keep players playing (which trash mobs have nothing to do with).
P2P games need the content to be good enough to keep people paying
F2P dont have to have good content, but they need to get people to pay for stuff
P2P is better for the players. f2p is better for the company.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
I agree that for an indie game the hardest part is getting people to come try the game.
However, a free trial (no credit card needed to try) of 1, 2 or 4 weeks (depending on what they feel is needed to get enough of a feel for the game in order to want to buy it) is all that is needed. This can be done just fine with a subscription model.
I do agree with others. I peeked at the website the other day, but didn't have time to really read everything. I was planning on going back this weekend and reading up on the game. Knowing that it is f2p simply means I won't go back and read about it or try it.
I'm not against games being F2P. The problem is that currently every game thinks it HAS to be F2P. Reality is that both models can exist as there are players for both. I personally don't play F2P games, that model is just not what I'm looking for.
I actually think the biggest problem for subscription games was that they insisted on sticking with the pay a box fee for the first month then subscribe, which is a big upfront cost on top of paying continuously. What companies who want to go with the subscription model need to do is launch with a free trial and just a sub cost. That way, just like F2P, a player can jump in and try it before deciding if they want to spend the money on it. I see that to be the biggest barrier to subscription games and new releases keep doing it.
I think an indie company that did a sub with an out the gate 2 week free trial could do just fine as a company and if the game seemed interesting I would certainly try with the intention of subbing up if I enjoyed it.
I thought they said that the shop would only have cosmetic and convenience items. Am I misinformed?
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
You forgot to mention how F2P pushes designers into making barriers or very slow parts to encourage people to pay for something in the shop that gets them past it or makes it faster.
Make the XP slower so that people buy XP boosts. Make it hard to get from place to place so people buy instant travel. Make good gear tough to find so you buy random chests or increased luck. Etc. etc. etc.
Not sure how you see the sub model forcing developers to slow things down and yet don't see similar problems with F2P.
I'm not saying whether this game will or won't, but I will say that whenever a company says that line people should go back and look at how many companies have said that is what they will do and at some point switch to more than cosmetic to keep the money coming in.
You are not misinformed. Nothing in regards to intended content has changed for the cash shop.
Except there is this game called Path of Exile that proves your statement wrong. I could provide more examples but you only said one game, and I provided one game that proves you wrong.
for an Indie title (specifically mmo) 15-20$ bucks for a box would be just fine so they can make enough money to justify having a safe, non-ridiculous and decent cash shop. Just because its indie doesnt mean it needs to be rid of any pay wall to enter the game. I would gladly buy the game, as long as it doesnt have a sub.
If i remember correctly this game aims to be a sandbox so as a full free game im sure there will be heavy crafting limitations locked on a cash shop. I prefer free over sub, but like i said, i would be more than happy to support the company with a box price.
In regards to problem players... wouldn't it be easier to just for registration and to actually play the game require a Credit Card on your account file as a mandatory requirement, if a player is banned that CC on file is banned and another CC number is required to make another account? People only have a finite number of cards once their banned they can't come back. It would be a good deterrence to such players and nothing would be charged to the card unless you buy something of course but a ID requirement would be a nice thing to have in all future MMOs and a CC is the best solution, I think their would be a small minority of players out there would be against this mostly, paranoid people, kids, and hackers-cheaters.
Also wanted to add 1 CC card only allowed to 1 account so people just cant make multiple accounts to troll or cheat or exploit with.
I don't think it's a terrible idea, it's similar to what a lot of companies have done with their free trials.
The main problem for us though is that it creates a barrier of entry. We don't want players to feel that they have to pay to play. We value free players. Maybe they convert to paying customers later, but either way we like having them in the game. The percentage of problem players is pretty small, so you cut out of a lot of potentially good players to get rid of a much smaller number of problem players. We want EVERYONE to try our game. If they like it keep playing, if they don't move on. But that's hard to do when you force them to enter in credit card details before playing the game. People are wary they are going to get auto-charged after at time period, which some free trials did automatically at the end of trial periods unless you manually cancel. They may be kids who don't want to go through the effort of trying to talk their parents into giving them some money for it if they haven't tried it yet. They might be suspicious of giving out credit card information to a company they aren't familiar with. Maybe they are on a shared computer and don't want to get out a card. Or maybe they are just too lazy to walk to the table and pull out their credit card just to try a game.
Bannings have an effect, even on free players. Sure they can make a new account. But they lose all the time they put in to their character. I think people tend to underestimate how much that affects players actions. The cost of a box or a subscription is probably far less affecting to many players than the loss of days, weeks, or months of time. I don't think it's much of an issue when players have already put time into their characters. If they were going to behave like jerks, they would have done that in a subscription game, as well. You just ban them like you would in one.
The problem players that does not help with are the gold spammers. But there are good solutions for that out there already. Automatic flaggings/bannings, ignore features, report features, auto-ignore, and then more complex and sweeping things like having an option to filter out global chat from non-members in a membership game.
https://www.therepopulation.com - Sci Fi Sandbox.