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F2P and P2P model comparisons, and what should die.
EricDanie
Member UncommonPosts: 2,238
I can see people are taking too seriously P2P and F2P models as a whole, but I believe these models cannot be treated as a whole anymore.
First, I know there is no such thing as free playing in these games, and there shouldn't be (in AAA titles) as they were developed for profit while offering you the fun to pay for them and commit yourself to long-term play. You will have to pay for it. What changes between these models is when, how much, and what you get for paying.
The rank is based on the potential costs from lowest to highest you should expect from these games on a short-time commitment.
2nd - Pay to Play - Costs: Monthly Fee
3rd - Pay to Play - Costs: Expansion/Retail One-Time Content Payments
4th - Pay to Play - Costs: Monthly Fee, Expansion/Retail Content One-Time Payments
1st - Free to Play - Costs: Monthly Fee
5th - Free to Play - Costs: Item Mall
6th - Free to Play - Costs: Item Mall, Monthly Fee
Based on this, I ask you to understand my point of view, my subdivision of these major models, and why Item Malls should die.
My point of view on this is that I truly hate Item Mall games and believe they should die as they break the RPG element - it creates a whole new tree of advantages based on how much money you can spend in that game (don't come with the pure comestic and optional BS, if in your game all that's avaiable in the item mall are comestics, get ready, they will abuse you more and more in the future as they will want more profit) while it does not remove the time tree of RPGs, the more time you spend on character, the higher is your potential. You CANNOT remove that and still call that game a RPG as the nature of the RPG element is to offer persistent character development which evolution - be it in any combination of the following forms: skills (be it in quantity or quality), gear, levels, area exploration, difficulty progression, etc, and it is where the fun of the RPG element resides. Obviously games which force you to reach a certain progression range in order to achieve the other major PvE or PvP elements of the game that are the fun and replayability of it may fail when they don't offer low range options for it, this is not the point of this discussion though.
The point here in the post it to show how Item Malls will make this even more complex, games are not meant to be easy or there is no challenge, and with it comes the difficulty increase in order to meet the expectations of people who spend a certain average in the Item Mall which will impact the ones who are below it and will force them to spend more - this is the inevitable point of failure of an Item Mall game. It is too hard to keep a line there, and that line will eventually break as new content is released with more item mall stuff in quantity and quality.
Item Mall games will persuade you with an endless relation of persuading you into buying more and more, that is why they are devilish and since we are in capitalism, its obvious priority is to increase profit - this is the endless circle that will make you suffer.
Anyway I hope you understand it, I am only against the Item Mall feature in games while I prefer Monthly Fees and Pay for Content options (older content often goes cheaper or even free in these games, you will not see that happen in Item Mall games though).
Please feel free to comment and discuss the quality of this article and the idea of the discussion itself.
Comments
Show me an example of a AAA FTP game. And nope, Guild Wars requires a box to be bought.
Show me an example of a AAA FTP game. And nope, Guild Wars requires a box to be bought.
Atlantica Online.
I agree with some of what you say.
IN my experience, P2P games (no matter the flaws) were of higher quality than F2P ones.
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
Since your argument is entirely based on a false premise and a clear statement that you do not want to hear anything other than what you have already decided upon, the only question left is :
Do you want to honestly discuss this or not?
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Since your argument is entirely based on a false premise and a clear statement that you do not want to hear anything other than what you have already decided upon, the only question left is :
Do you want to honestly discuss this or not?
Point of views are not static. Since I started playing MMOs my view on this has changed greatly as I experienced new games (and the evolution of old ones) and points of view. At that time I was against Monthly Fee models as I thought the idea of paying repeatedly to simply play a same game was unacceptable.
I do not expect the OP to remain the decision about this, you are free to argue about any of this, and that the objective of the discussion - this way we can all see and understand different points of view and perhaps learn something that we didn't know and/or change our point of view.
Of course you can also say this argument is entirely based on a false premise and a clear statement that people are susceptible to change their point of view.
Show me an example of a AAA FTP game. And nope, Guild Wars requires a box to be bought.
Atlantica Online.
Altantica was horrible.
It even auto-walks your character to the next quest.
Show me an example of a AAA FTP game. And nope, Guild Wars requires a box to be bought.
Atlantica Online.
Altantica was horrible.
It even auto-walks your character to the next quest.
It may be horrible for you, but it is one of the most popular F2P games. I also think it is horrible, but I can't deny it is a F2P AAA title. It is in the Item Mall category though, it's horrible how the game shows you some nice mechanics like teleport directly to maps, auto-combat, check what a monster is composed of before engaging, and many more things and then your licenses expires and you have to pay for more, and paying for 30 days of each license would much more than a monthly fee would.
You might want to look at FreeRealms before you say that. You can purchase the +8 epic sword.
it depends. usually the games that offer xp boosters are unholy grinds. that means without the xp booster leveling in that game will be horrible and most likely will make 99 out of every 100 F2P players quit halfway.
also,most successful item mall games offer safe ugrading items ,or at least higher chance upgrade items. thats why a F2P player with his +3 gear poses no threat to a item mall customer with his +8 gear, while the +3 player knows that pushing for +8 will break all his stuff before reaching +5.
its very simple. games that offer meaningless cash shop items arent profitable in the long run (unless they are social/chibi mmorpgs where cutesy is the goal...but i dont even count those as games)
those games with successful cash shop models,became succesful because the cash shop is such a huge advantage in terms of gameplay that it becomes highly desirable for some players to spend monthly sums on it.
once there, the playing field between F2P and RMT players becomes totally unbalanced, and the game sucks
Maybe it's just a bit too early for me, but I have no idea what the OP is going on about here.
Last i checked a 30 day warrior package which has every license in it cost 15 bucks,which is the regular subscription fee for p2p games plus every item mall thing there can be bought in game for gold.
The whole point of the Item Mall is to allow players to buy things that give them advantages. Every one of them do it. They wouldn't have a business model without it. That IS the business model. If the minority are willing to buy items that give them advantages that becomes the new norm, so you essentially don't have a choice to buy or not to buy. If you want to be on an even playing field, you have to spend the money. I'll have no part of it. I deal with that in real life every day. Why deal with it in a game designed for entertainment?
If you have more money, you get better cars, better seats at Football Games, better vacations, better houses, better clothes, better everything. In a videogame, at least a decent videgame, I should know that real money doesn't give someone a leg up. Why play then? Its like being on a gameshow where your opponent has all the answers. Whats the point?
Neither model of payment should die, because they appeal to different players.
The P2P model appeals to players that want an even playing field. If I play 10 hours, and you play 10 hours, our characters are roughly the same in level, skill level, gear, money. If I play 1,000 hours, and you play 1,000 hours, again our characters are roughly the same in level, skill level, gear, and money.
However, this concept does not appeal to everyone. Some people don't want a level playing field, where if I play 10 hours and you play 10 hours, we are roughly equal. They want a game where if they play 10 hours and I play 10 hours, and they have some money to spend and I don't, they can be superior to me.
This model works beautifully because there are many players that want to experience an online world, but either won't or can't pay for it. These players are willing to be the lackeys, serfs, of the game and in return they get to play for free. It works for everyone. The players with no money get to toil along, but at least they get to play. The players with money get to feel superior, and everyone benefits.
So, both models are relevant, and should coexist for all those different types of players.
Ask someone that plays F2P games, but never spends a dime, if they would rather play a p2p game if someone else paid their sub fee for a year, or they'd rather stick around the f2p game.
You might want to look at FreeRealms before you say that. You can purchase the +8 epic sword.
That's the exception, not the rule, and imo FreeRealms is an entirely different kind of mmorpg. It's not like traditional mmorpg's.
You might want to look at FreeRealms before you say that. You can purchase the +8 epic sword.
In Rohan Online, you can virtually buy anything people are willing to sell for the currency based on real life money - be it epic items, be it characters (yes, you can sell characters, lol).
In RF Online, they broke their upgrading system when they brought their cash shop up, and continue to further break it at every update. You had the choice of mining, killing bosses and compete with other guilds of the same race in the game to acquire the materials to do the normal upgrading, and even with that rate, the best weapons you would see are +5 ones after months, years of effort focused on that only task - their upgrade chances go as low as 25% from +3 to +4, 10% from +4 to +5, 2% from +5 to +6, 0,0x% from +6 to +7.
Then, with the cash shop, they reduced the means of acquiring these materials by 90% of the original rates, removed some means in which it will take you months to make even a +4 weapon (prices for these materials skyrocketed by like 10 or 20 times their original price), while you could spend a few thousands bucks on cash shop upgraders and get a weapon directly from +0 to +7 without the risk of loss, that you would face the normal way.
In usual korean grindfests that rely on the epic week and month-long grind to acquire ONE level, you get the cash shop items to cut that process by half, or by a third, reduce or eliminate the death penalties, or reduce the difficulty with things such as reducing equipment level requirements - stat modifies, etc. If you consider that an even playing field, I no longer know what that is.
Gameloading, please show me an online game more than two years old that has not went this way with their cash shop.
You might want to look at FreeRealms before you say that. You can purchase the +8 epic sword.
In Rohan Online, you can virtually buy anything people are willing to sell for the currency based on real life money - be it epic items, be it characters (yes, you can sell characters, lol).
In RF Online, they broke their upgrading system when they brought their cash shop up, and continue to further break it at every update. You had the choice of mining, killing bosses and compete with other guilds of the same race in the game to acquire the materials to do the normal upgrading, and even with that rate, the best weapons you would see are +5 ones after months, years of effort focused on that only task - their upgrade chances go as low as 25% from +3 to +4, 10% from +4 to +5, 2% from +5 to +6, 0,0x% from +6 to +7.
Then, with the cash shop, they reduced the means of acquiring these materials by a factor of 10%, in which it will take you months to make even a +4 weapon, while you could spend a few thousands bucks on cash shop upgraders and get a weapon directly from +0 to +7 without the risk of loss.
In usual korean grindfests that rely on the epic week and month-long grind to acquire ONE level, you get the cash shop items to cut that process by half, or by a third, and reduce or eliminate the death penalties. If you consider that an even playing field, I no longer know what that is.
Gameloading, please show me an online game more than two years old that has not went this way with their cash shop.
Thats not "breaking the experience". If it bothers you so much, fork over some money to get those upgrade boosters, chances are you'll still be cheaper off than the 15$. It is still very much possible to play the game for no charge and still do quite well and compete in the higher tier.
I don't think anybody who is playing these games for nothing has anything to complain about. The other people make it possible for the game to exist, if you really want to reduce the timesink, you have the ability to do so for some cash.
You keep talking about an "Even playingfield". What do you need an even playing field for? These are MMORPG's, Not Call of Duty or Counterstrike, If you want an Even playingfield, you're playing the wrong genre to begin with, as a person who spends more time on a game will usually be stronger than a person who doesn't in any mmorpg.
You might want to look at FreeRealms before you say that. You can purchase the +8 epic sword.
In Rohan Online, you can virtually buy anything people are willing to sell for the currency based on real life money - be it epic items, be it characters (yes, you can sell characters, lol).
In RF Online, they broke their upgrading system when they brought their cash shop up, and continue to further break it at every update. You had the choice of mining, killing bosses and compete with other guilds of the same race in the game to acquire the materials to do the normal upgrading, and even with that rate, the best weapons you would see are +5 ones after months, years of effort focused on that only task - their upgrade chances go as low as 25% from +3 to +4, 10% from +4 to +5, 2% from +5 to +6, 0,0x% from +6 to +7.
Then, with the cash shop, they reduced the means of acquiring these materials by a factor of 10%, in which it will take you months to make even a +4 weapon, while you could spend a few thousands bucks on cash shop upgraders and get a weapon directly from +0 to +7 without the risk of loss.
In usual korean grindfests that rely on the epic week and month-long grind to acquire ONE level, you get the cash shop items to cut that process by half, or by a third, and reduce or eliminate the death penalties. If you consider that an even playing field, I no longer know what that is.
Gameloading, please show me an online game more than two years old that has not went this way with their cash shop.
Thats not "breaking the experience". If it bothers you so much, fork over some money to get those upgrade boosters, chances are you'll still be cheaper off than the 15$. It is still very much possible to play the game for no charge and still do quite well and compete in the higher tier.
I don't think anybody who is playing these games for nothing has anything to complain about. The other people make it possible for the game to exist, if you really want to reduce the timesink, you have the ability to do so for some cash.
You keep talking about an "Even playingfield". What do you need an even playing field for? These are MMORPG's, Not Call of Duty or Counterstrike, If you want an Even playingfield, you're playing the wrong genre to begin with, as a person who spends more time on a game will usually be stronger than a person who doesn't in any mmorpg.
This "even playfield", however, is a trend that some MMORPGs do take despite the fact that RPG elements directly confront the non-RPG competitivity, and they have to choose a line to draw. It's funny though, that you can also see that trend in FPS games choosing to put a few RPG elements, such as Battlefield franchise games with the unlock and rank system, strategy games such as Gunbound, racing games such as Tales Runner.
A few examples of RPG games going the "even playfield" way can be Guild Wars, Chronicles of Spellborn and even World of Warcraft when it comes to arena tournaments with temporary servers in which gear is avaiable to players freely choose from.
Genre mixing is pretty common nowadays, it includes different genre fans to their potential market pool while it is a harder task to be done, yet the word balance comes up in most games, be it time-related, skill-related or money-related.
Show me an example of a AAA FTP game. And nope, Guild Wars requires a box to be bought.
Atlantica Online.
Altantica was horrible.
It even auto-walks your character to the next quest.
This post is irrelevant in as such it is your opinion. I’m sure I would think some of the games you believe are “great” where horrible as well.
When I said i had "time", i meant virtual time, i got no RL "time" for you.
Sounds like you recognize people that play F2P games and don't spend any money are second class citizens. They should be grateful to thier overlords, the players that actually make the game possible by paying for extras. And I agree. If you want to be a serf, and play the game for free so the people that actually pay can feel superior that's fine. The players that pay feel great, and the serfs get to play for free, so both benefit. But that sort of parasitic relationship in the player base doesn't appeal to me from either side.
People that play P2P games dont' measure the "even playing field" by "playing longer". They measure it by hours played. 10 hours played, 100 hours played, 1,000 hours played, and all characters will be roughly equal.
The only way it could be other wise is if there was no advancement, and people don't want RPGS with no advancement since that's a big part of the genre.
F2P is 50 bucks spent this month on upgrades equals 50 bucks spent this month on upgrades. If you don't pay, then you aren't equal and you can never catch up in hours.
I play 100 hours and spend 100 bucks, I will always be better than you if you play 100 hours and don't spend 100 bucks.