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Did p2p die or did it evolve
DamonVile
Member UncommonPosts: 4,818
We see a lot of people say p2p died and has been replaced by f2p or that the age of subs is dead, but are they really ?
Now before I try and make my point you have to be able to accept the f2p is not a blanket you can throw over every mmo out there. There are so many kinds of free to play models calling them all just free to play is a bit like calling chicken meat because it's all the same thing.
Some free to play games are nothing more than cash grabs and everything else people like to stereotype the whole group into. These games really are nothing more than a lame attempt to milk the whales. the smallest % of people pay the largest amounts of money and pretty much float the game on their need to outdo other players by any means.
That isn't true of all free to play games though. If you look at DC universe online. It has the no pay gate entry. It has the cash shop, the DLC you have to buy ect ect. but.... it has a sub that gives you access to everything. You buy the sub and that's pretty much it. No buying keys, no DLC no bag restriction bank slot purchases ect ect. It's all included in your sub.
DCU is hardly alone in the f2p universe. There are lots of games like it. Some are a little less honest about it than SOE is but being a newish pay model there is always going to be those who want to see how far they can stretch the limit.
So what has DCU really done. Did they go free to play or are they still really a p2p game that let people try it for free and play while buying the game a la carte if they want to.
You see so many times people say they wish they could just pay a sub and play and not worry about all this cash shop crap. But those games are out there and they're pretty popular in the free to play world, so I have to wonder. Did p2p just evolve to hide within the free to play world or is it really dead ? It seems to me that if you want to play a p2p game they're still out there. The companies just found a way to advertise their games better.
Comments
No.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
All the games I know of that are F2P with a SUB option started as Sub games and migrated so while the specific game evolved I really think it's to early to say it's a sustainable business strategy to launch a sub game knowing it's going F2P in 1-2 years.
If what I am assuming is true Wildstar is looking to be the first game to launch with both a B2P/F2P (not sure yet?) and Sub model and if it's successful could set off a whole slew of new titles following similar models. Guess we will have to wait and see how it goes for them.
It's P2P-only that is struggling to survive right now. The model you are describing many people refer to as freemium. EQ2 has been doing it for a long time as has DDO and LotRO. You can play almost everything until a certain point and then they ask you if you would like to pay if you want to progress further. In EQ2, it is the strength of your abilities and AA points that need to be unlocked through a sub. In DDO and LotRO it is mostly content related stuff you can either buy a la carte or pay a sub.
I like the model because it's honest from a consumer point of view. You can't hide anything from the consumer before they decide to drop some money on it. They show you the game for what it is and you can play for hundreds of hours before considering if you like it enough to pay for it.
P2P hasn't died. 'Good' MMORPG's have died and companies are throwing together a business model that will sustain their 'generic' game.
They're calling it hybrid but I don't think it's going to be much different than what we call freemium. It's true that it's going to be the first to ever launch like that but it seems that all people really require to give a game a try is the removable of that pay game...the box price. ( b2p is a totally different animal )
I mean these freemium games mostly have growing populations but they're nothing more than a p2p game calling itself free to play. I don't consider it a bad thing, just interesting.
And just to be clear on my opinions about this, I'm playing dcu at the moment and subbing .
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
I didn't call it freemium in my original post because I didn't want people to think SWTOR :P but companies like you've listed have done a much better job of it. They are the games I was more thinking about and how they aren't really " gone free to play " but are more evolved p2p games. It's kind of why I laugh at some of the responses in this thread. Some people obviously didn't even read to the second line. Just saw free to play and thought " no it's bad! " /post
And I totally agree with your last part. Free trials are the number one way people suggest to bolster/advertise a game. Yet when they call it a free to play game and turn it into freemium it suddenly becomes a garbage game that's crap.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Most F2P are subs.... so.... No?
Yeah, after reading your second post I figured you left out your knowledge of what a freemium model was on purpose.
What I used to wonder is what would people say about games when almost all of them became F2P (or some version of it). The competition is forcing one after the other to drop their sub-only payment plan and it won't be long before only the most niche games are released with a sub-only style model. I used to think that as this happened, people would realize that the games that are dropping their subs are essentially the same games with a different payment model. But instead of adapting, they have instead resorted to saying every single game on the planet is shit and that's why they all had to go F2P.
In general, I think people underestimate how extreme the competition for MMO dollars is right now. Hopefully at some point people will start adapting to the new models that are presented, especially the ones that are really fair and good for the consumer. I think there are like 2 AAA MMOs left that ask for a sub (both of which I am ironically subbed to). :P
I honestly don't give a crap what you call them. I am getting intensely bored of all these ridiculous labeling discussions. Is it a sandbox or is it a themepark? Who gives a crap!!
They are what they are. Free to play with the option to pay. It is the players option. And don't feed me the line that you have to pay if you want all the content. 99% of players don't care about experiencing all of the content. And in most cases it is available without paying.
I too would pay for a sub game if I wanted to play it. I just don't see that happening though and many people feel the same.
So go ahead and ignore F2P games. Your available game list just got a lot smaller.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
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Enjoy your discussion.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
I thought it was one of those pictures on playing cards.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Tell that to someone in advertising. you're far more susceptible to names and how things are presented to you than you know apparently. That's the "point" you seem to be missing.
All of those categories are a little inaccurate anyway, the classic P2P usually included retail and subscription, many subscription and retail games include micro transactions, and F2P has a wild variety of pay options, and merchandise for sale, from Subscriptions, to salable items and features, to flat out gambling and power selling...
Almost any game can be called F2P if they offer free weekends, or demos... your playing it for free right, not much of it, but free... inversely, F2P games could be free to join, but cost money to do anything relevant...
Now that pretty much all games have free trials or portions of free content, they may as well drop the old monikers and start describing more along the lines of what and where they sales start, not F2P or P2P... honestly, WoW has a free trial... there's very little non-F2P titles out there.
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes.
That way, if they get angry, they'll be a mile away... and barefoot.
I would say that EvE Onlines payment system is the evolution of the old pay 2 play system.
1) They offer a free trial period to test the product.
2) If you want to proceed gaming, you need to buy the product and receive 1 month of gametime.
3) If you want to proceed gaming after your first month, you need to subscribe.
4) Gametime can be transfered into so called PLEX and be sold from player to player for ingame currency.
Plus: An ingame store offers cosmetic changes to the apperance of your character
I do not think that pay 2 play is dead. The question is, if the company and investors behind a game want to maximize their ROI over a given short product lifetime, or if they decide on delivering a product with a long expected lifetime. However, lifetime of certain games may be extended by continuos development of additional content. As long as the ROI is positive, the development continuos.
You should also please bear in mind, that the market has changed a lot since the early days of MMOs and computer games. Back in early 2000, the industry was founded by a hand full of companies, many of them startups with teams of small to medium size. Competition and therefore marketing was not as distinct as it is today. Also, the customers expectation towards a product (MMO) is much higher. Today the market is well saturated and development teams reach high numbers leading to development costs of over 20-50 million dollars. Only the one who knows will potentially buy the product. So, set on top another 20-50 million and there you have your marketing budget.
To make it more understandable: Winter is not coming, it is already here. Developers, funded by investors, compete in a well saturated market. Different strategies lead to success. Some producers decide on rolling out several products with a Pareto-style payment model (80:20 rule; 20% of your customers generate the volume of sales) in order to ensure ROI and growth. Another approach is the production of niche products that are far less cost intensive when it comes to marketing. However, I guess we could discuss this matter for a very long time, so I better stop now.
Bottomline: The p2p system still exists. From time to time it simply changes a bit to adapt to todays market.
The reason there are not many p2p games at the moment is because the good ones have got pretty old now and people tend not to play those games so they have gone f2p to get the numbers back up.. also there are currently hardly any games out there good enough to have a monthly sub..
People would be more than willing to pay a sub for a good game but over the last few years all MMORPGs have basically been bad wow clones and people dont want to pay money for bad wow clones so they all go f2p..
Pay to play has evolved like a boss. I'd go so far as to say the MMO industry is making more money now than ever based off the fact that players don't even realize how much they are playing. We get into a free to play game, we like it and want to support the devs, so we buy something here or there from the cash shop, before you know it you are paying the price of a sub or more per month. Planetside 2 has probably gotten more money out of me than any other game I've played at this point, on top of my sub I still buy the ocassional Station Cash to go get some new camos or guns for the pew pew. Then you have games like EVE which are still p2p, but have found ingenious ways to incorporate cash shops - PLEX. You don't need to PLEX to pew pew, but man it helps when you are a newbie.
It's not a bad thing though, by any stretch of the imagination. I am a firm supporter of F2P MMOs (despite my main MMO being sub-based) because it has revitalized a dying industry. Look at SWTOR, for all the trash people talk about the game, it's still a pretty good RPG (little light on the MMO part) that didn't deserve to shut down, and F2P saved it. Now you've got RIFT which was doing fine as a sub game making the switch because it just makes sense. There is more money to be had as a F2P game now. With so many free options out there, P2P or even B2P games are less enticing. It's a barrier to entry that shouldn't exist anymore, IMO.
Then we have games like Darkfall. It sounded amazing, and I really wanted to try it, but it took me like a month to convince myself to do it. $40 or whatever plus a sub fee just to see if I like it? Turns out, I didn't, because the game was nothing more than a PVP arena. So from now on if I have to pay that much up front, I'm waiting. Payment models can tell you a lot about games now - if they try to make you pay a ton up front, chances are it's because they know you aren't going to stick around.
It's been a slow, agonizing death but I think the old concept of P2P has evolved . We still P2P, we just choose how to do it and have much better control over what games we pay for.
Of course, sub games just giving a free trial and, I don't know, not sucking could have saved us all a lot of grief.
As a side note - this new style of paying for MMOs has given Indie developers a better chance at getting their games out to the public. I have played a bunch of small, mostly unknown titles that have just blown me away all things to F2P.
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