Originally posted by kaiser3282 No, you misunderstand, Im not saying paying for it is the best alternative, im simply pointing out that theres a big clash between the players stuck in the old way of completing timesinks = achievment/status/skill VS the newer method of screw the 200 hundred hours of grinding and timesinks, i have a life (job, family, etc), and time = money, so better to just spend a few measly hours pay than waste hundreds of hours in game. (personally, the newer/2nd method works better for me for most games) I use both methods depending on the game. Some games i do find fun and worthwhile to play the content, others i might only play for 1 purpose such as to pvp at higher levels, so i find it pointless spending 100 hours grinding & timesinking my way up, so spending what for me is only an hour or 2 worth of pay instead so i can get to the pvp quicker is worth it.
Seems to me that the issue is simply conflicting play styles. What you call being "stuck in the old way" I call "the way MMORPGs are meant to be played." When I play an MMORPG, I want a persistant world that runs on a set of rules that favors realism, long-term goals and achievements, and long-term character development and story. The idea of skipping all of the content to get to high level endgame PvP is ridiculous to me. It seems odd to play MMORPGs for quick, instant action. If that's what I was after, I would play an action game like Bad Company 2 or Modern Warfare 2. I don't think a game that encourages skipping to the end like that and just playing end-game PvP out of the box isn't really an MMORPG, at least not by my definition.
Either way, the 2 end results are usually the same. People whine and bitch about things being unfair, paying player shaving an edge, etc but a lot of those complaints are based on ignorance and the assumption that all cash shop / F2P games are the same. Many have tried a F2P 2-3 years ago, didn't like that system, and assume that every other F2P game out there works exactly the same as that 1 game, having no idea how little that gap between paying and nonpaying players is in many games. Many F2P naysayers are also unaware of the fact that several F2P games out there offer alternatives to paying. 3 examples are DOO, RoM, and Rohan.
I've played DDO, but not the other two. These exceptions are certainly more palatable than a straight F2P model. I would welcome a trend of F2P games in which item mall currency can be earned in game, but there are still a lot of issues with that. For example, how much in-game "grind" does it take to earn item mall currency? No doubt that varies a lot from one game to another. If it takes a month to grind out $1 of currency, it's not worth it. Rohan sounds like the opposite extreme -- if it's relatively easy to to earn $20-$50 selling items, why would anyone spend real money? And if people start to catch on that they can craft those items and sell them for $20-$50 a pop, the supply of the items goes up and the price is driven down.
As to your last paragraph. good questions, but i ask in return... what is there to do after you spend 2 years and hundreds of hours grinding out your levels and gear in other games? Same thing there is to do after i buy stuff from cash shop... whatever you/i want (pvp, crafting, roleplaying, helping others, etc). Just as i cant improve my character after i buy a certain amount, same goes for P2Ps. You reach a point where there is no more real advancement to make, youve got top level and the best possible gear, just like me, theres no difference really.
Big difference -- in the P2P game I have spent months or years playing the game in order to earn the items and get to the point where I have the best gear. Having the best gear isn't what's important, the journey to get there is the fun part. Along the way I will have gone through several different sets of upgrades, found many different items with various properties and fun special abilities, played through tons of quests, dungeons and raids, made friends with players who helped me along the way, and I'd feel a sense of accomplishment after each new item I earn and each set of armor that I complete. In F2P, you just buy the end gear and skip the journey. So the way I see it, earning max gear in P2P = months or years of playing the game to earn the best gear and feeling a sense of accomplishment. Earning max gear in F2P = 10 minutes of spending money.
Same thing there is to do after i buy stuff from cash shop... whatever you/i want (pvp, crafting, roleplaying, helping others, etc).
pvp? - what rewards can you earn for winning, or do you just play for fun? crafting? - what do you craft if you already bought the best gear on the item mall? roleplaying? - meh helping others? - helping them with what? pvp with no rewards? crafting stuff they don't need?
**Note** Bought equipment is also a very common misconception. The majority of F2Ps, especially those released in the past 1-2 years, do not offer any equipment (other than cosmetic/style stuff) for sale. You still need to get all your equipment ingame, just like everyone else.
Most of those games are hybrids, meaning that they have those cosmetic item malls on top of a subscription fee. These may be the worst "nickle-and-dime" offenders of all -- you buy the box, you buy the subscription, and now you have to pay even more to make your character look nice. Cryptic is the worst offender with Champions and STO. City of Heroes and City of Villains fits this category too I think. Even WoW is in this category nowadays, with its $25 horse and $10 non-combat pets.
I've never heard of a F2P that has no subscription fee and only cosmetic items on the item mall. In a game like that I guess the characters must be hideously ugly until you dress them up with item mall stuff, or there would be no way a game like that could sustain itself.
If the gameplay is good the players will come. However, when an entire game is being designed around selling virtual items, is anyone on the team thinking about gameplay?
Just wanted to touch on a few points in your reply without (hopefully) going into long rants again :-P
1) The reasons for playing MMOs, and the specific MMOs you play vary from person to person. I play various types of MMOS, as well as many games besides MMOs, all for different reasons, and i understand others do the same, im just speaking from my own personal view here. As i mentioned, IF a game is good enough, and i actually do enjoy the journey, i do exactly thata nd enjoy it without skipping over content, however there are a lot of games that fit the stereotype of "the game doesnt begin until endgame", and in most of those cases there is no real point to playing through the content (no good story, little to no progression other than level & gear, nothing but pointless grind quests, etc). I also sometimes jump into an MMO for no other reason but to play with my brother or a couple of friends, and have no real interest in the game outsid eof the fact that they play it, so in those cases i will skip as much as i can to catch up to them, and when theyre not on i go back to my MMO of choice for actual playing.
2) Agreed, giving you the options of eitehr is the best way to go, rather than giving no choice but to pay for anything. RoM, the grind isnt too bad, just requires a bit of luck usually. Same goes for Rohan too, although the level grind itself in the game is (or at least was, havent played in a long time) pretty massive. As for the price of the stuff i was selling, granted that wasnt for everything, some things only went for a couple bucks, but some of the better stuff i made sold for those prices. But, that was with a little bit of luck, and a lot of trial and error to get my mastery of their systems down to where i could produce such high quality stuff. My 1st 2 characters in the game also had the best equipment on the server by far (about 50% better compared to other equal level, and considered "good" geared characters) for many months, allowing me to in some cases hold my own solo vs entire guilds for short periods of time in their Township battles. I was a bit of an exception for the first few months the game was out, and never shared my crafting methods with others even within my guild, and would instead take requests for making them items myself. The average player wont be making stuff that can sell for quite that much constantly, but it can be done with some know how.
3) PVP, Crafting, Helping others, etc - Crafting depends on the game and which type you pick up, but some have purpose to crafting outside of gear, such as making potions/scrolls and things like that. Also crafting to help guildies/friends with gear.
For the PvP, in some games there are real achievements to be earned from pvp, some meaningless, some with lots of importance. Using RF Online as an example again, they have an election system for a Race Leader and his Counsel every week on each of the 3 races. The most important thing in order to run for Archon (their term for leaders), you have to have more CP (Contribution Points, earned like 99% through PvP kills) than other people applying to run as well. There are limited spots on the registration, and if anyone registers with higher CP than you, you get knocked off the list and cant even be voted for. Other games also have similar systems, or variations of it for other purposes.
Helping others - as i mentioned earlier, i do play with my brother and other friends (RL, not just MMO friends) and i do help them, as well as those i meet ingame with things like taking down bosses, running raids/dungeons/instances, level grinding, loot/gear farming, and running organized PvP groups.
The idea of skipping all of the content to get to high level endgame PvP is ridiculous to me. It seems odd to play MMORPGs for quick, instant action.
First off, I don’t think anyone has said they want to skip content that is truly deemed “great” just to get to the end game for what you call a “quick fix”. That’s a pointless fabrication. The issue applies more to the trend in F2P games of painful grinding and other time sinks which must be endured to experience the anemic content sprinkled throughout the game, in order to reach the “promised” fun of the end game, if any.
Still, while many subscription games like WoW have a ton of great content at all levels, they can also be guilty of painful time sinks that don’t add any value to the game. The real issue is when some things are a painful time sink for some, but fun or enjoyable for others. Take travel for instance. In WoW, you can argue that travel is a big part of immersion, leads to awe and the enjoyment of the majesty of the game world for starters. For players who don’t have as much time to play, or even if they are simply impatient, travel can really suck. You won’t ever convince them to like it. And you don’t need to. Whether or not a person enjoys travel is subjective, so to take away choice punishes a portion of your players. This is where an item mall could be of use, offering something that allows you to avoid long painful trips. Traditionally players who dislike travel either bite the bullet or they might eventually quit. With a choice provided by an item mall or what have you, the dedicated portion will happily pay to avoid travel because it has value to them. Even those who enjoy travel might pay when they find themselves short of playing time. Please refrain from defending travel as it’s not the point of the discussion. Also, i am not suggesting WoW have an item mall because they charge subs, if they were F2P then yes.
Originally posted by CayneJobb
What you call being "stuck in the old way" I call "the way MMORPGs are meant to be played.
Your comment is exactly the point I am trying to make about the relationship between individual preferences, play styles and things like item malls. Let’s take your suggestion of a player who wants to blow by content he subjectively finds boring so he can get to the “end game”, pvp in WoW or whatever it may be. This is precisely what drives the success of F2P models. Since mmorpgs have so many different game elements, you can’t please everyone all the time. Some players love travel, others are inconvenienced by it, some players just want to PVP competitively so leveling becomes a chore, and so on.
Successful Item malls or whatever sales methods succeed because of the fact consumers have different needs, play styles and preferences. All players do not play mmorpgs the same, they find their own enjoyment in their own ways, as is demonstrated in any thread on mmorpg.com.
And finally…
Originally posted by CayneJobb
“It seems odd to play MMORPGs for quick, instant action. If that's what I was after, I would play an action game like Bad Company 2 or Modern Warfare 2.”
Some players love the PVP experience within the realms of a mmorpg. Not to be nasty, but It’s silly and thoughtless to just “banish” them to Modern Warfare II. It’s a thought-ending cliché that everyone is sick and tired of hearing, and it diminishes whatever you are trying to say. A multiplayer FPS is an entirely different experience.
P.S> Games like WoW, because they charge a monthly fee, in my opinion, will be nickel and diming players if they add an item mall unless they go F2P . I think item malls should be reserved for F2P games and when done right can allow them to compete for player-bases with games like WoW and still be financially viable, which is exactly what they are doing, they just need to make better games. WoW is at the top of the food chain so they don't need to go F2P since they still hold pricing power. Until something truly better comes out.
Hmmm .... F2P seems like a greedy and shallow commercialization mechanism, more often than not, to squeeze more from a shallow base, eventually.
I always come back to Guild Wars, in thought. Their business model of attracting players with rich content, rather than shallowing the perception of their game and the entertainment experience with tchotkes. And the result? One of the most loyal and largest fan-bases in the mmorpg market.
Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true – you know it, and they know it. Gamers may buy the argument that your MMO requires a subscription fee, if you can tell them what they are getting for their money.
With Guild Wars we ask players to make a choice only one time, and that choice is whether to buy the game, or not to buy the game. While we don't enjoy a recurring revenue stream each month, we do benefit from the fact that most Guild Wars players come back to the game when we release new content, so we are less concerned about players putting the game down for a few months. Players don't have to decide whether to stay married or get divorced, they just have to decide whether they want to play today or not. Beyond the benefit of a lower pain threshold to get into the game, this is the core strength of the Guild Wars business model, and one of the reasons it continues to thrive when many other subscription-based MMOs are struggling.
Hmmm .... F2P seems like a greedy and shallow commercialization mechanism, more often than not, to squeeze more from a shallow base, eventually.
I love Guildwars. They are also, F2P, but they follow the feature limited demo model. Then they are F2P when compared to Subscription games. They were innovative which all companies need to be right now. To offset not having subscription costs, they also have a form of item mall which sells:
In addition, the GW revenue stream comes in the form of premium content when they release expansions.
If they wanted, they could release GW2 for free and then charge for expansions and have stuff in the item mall like now, which players would happily pay for. This would probably increase their player base massively.
We like GW because the game is good and they did it right so we trust them.
Hmmm .... F2P seems like a greedy and shallow commercialization mechanism, more often than not, to squeeze more from a shallow base, eventually.
I always come back to Guild Wars, in thought. Their business model of attracting players with rich content, rather than shallowing the perception of their game and the entertainment experience with tchotkes. And the result? One of the most loyal and largest fan-bases in the mmorpg market.
Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true – you know it, and they know it. Gamers may buy the argument that your MMO requires a subscription fee, if you can tell them what they are getting for their money.
With Guild Wars we ask players to make a choice only one time, and that choice is whether to buy the game, or not to buy the game. While we don't enjoy a recurring revenue stream each month, we do benefit from the fact that most Guild Wars players come back to the game when we release new content, so we are less concerned about players putting the game down for a few months. Players don't have to decide whether to stay married or get divorced, they just have to decide whether they want to play today or not. Beyond the benefit of a lower pain threshold to get into the game, this is the core strength of the Guild Wars business model, and one of the reasons it continues to thrive when many other subscription-based MMOs are struggling.
One of many reasons why im beggining to love Anet and GW. I never paid much attention to either in the past, and never gave GW a shot, mostly due to playing too many games and just passing it up as something that didn't jump out as appealing to me. But when i started hearing all the recent news about GW2, I couldnt resist giving GW1 a shot, and i fell in love with the game my first day playing. Granted, it may not be everyone's type of game because of things like instancing (i used to feel the same until i logged into GW1), but it really is a great game in everything that it does, and in the past couple weeks Arenanet has gone and snagged themselves another loyal fan, and from the looks of the forums here I'm far from the only one. The way theyre handling things in both their old game and their new game, i dont think ive ever seen things handled so well from any other (supposedly) AAA Developer. Definitely not anytime in the past 4-5 years.
Originally posted by kaiser3282...IF a game is good enough, and i actually do enjoy the journey, i do exactly thata nd enjoy it without skipping over content, however there are a lot of games that fit the stereotype of "the game doesnt begin until endgame", and in most of those cases there is no real point to playing through the content (no good story, little to no progression other than level & gear, nothing but pointless grind quests, etc).
I simply would have no desire at all to play a game like you described here. I'd flat out call that an awful game, and I'd only play it long enough to realize that I wasted a lot of time downloading and installing that garbage. Basically at the start of any MMO I have to go through leveling a character, and if that part isn't fun for me, then I'm gone. I uninstall the game and I'm on to something else already. There are a lot of games out there, why would I continue playing something with "no good story, little to no progression other than level & gear, nothing but pointless grind quests, etc." Gah. DO NOT WANT.
Originally posted by Devros First off, I dont think anyone has said they want to skip content that is truly deemed great just to get to the end game for what you call a quick fix. Thats a pointless fabrication. The issue applies more to the trend in F2P games of painful grinding and other time sinks which must be endured to experience the anemic content sprinkled throughout the game, in order to reach the promised fun of the end game, if any.
Again, like I described above, a game like this I just wouldn't play. Period. And you've described another reason why I hate F2P: "the trend in F2P games of painful grinding and other time sinks which must be endured." Horrible. I see this with almost all of the F2P games that come out of Asia. Leveling that is very grindy, tedious, and boring, and sometimes with quests that were poorly translated to English. Ugh. I can't even last ten minutes in games like that. It makes my head hurt just imagining grinding it out all the way to the endgame. If I absolutely had to, then buying my way to the endgame would probably be the only way I could do it, but why in the world would I even consider that? "Leveling in this game sucks, I'm not enjoying this game at all, it's grindy, it's boring, so let me get out my credit card and spend more money on it." Wait, what?
It sounds to me like a major argument for F2P is "leveling up sucks in F2P games, so I want to be able to buy my way to the endgame." I wonder, if F2P games were designed better would they cease to be sustainable because players would no longer feel the need to buy their way past all of the awful content?
Here's a hypothetical question... What if there was no harsh grinds and no endgame, and leveling up characters from 0 to 100 was the whole game and it was full of great content, story, etc. Would you still want it to be F2P with an item mall, or is it possible that in this situation you might prefer a subscription plan?
... Take travel for instance. In WoW, you can argue that travel is a big part of immersion, leads to awe and the enjoyment of the majesty of the game world for starters. For players who dont have as much time to play, or even if they are simply impatient, travel can really suck. You wont ever convince them to like it. And you dont need to. Whether or not a person enjoys travel is subjective, so to take away choice punishes a portion of your players. This is where an item mall could be of use, offering something that allows you to avoid long painful trips.
Not a good example. Travel in WoW is pretty negligible. There are dozens of ways to travel instantly such as hearthstones, meeting stones, warlocks, and various items and spells. Even without all of that, fast flying mounts get you around pretty quickly.
Personally, I don't like a lot of travel in MMORPGs. And in my opinion, designing the game with very long, tedious travel and then selling an instant port potion or something on an item mall is total bull crap, and I wouldn't play a game like that. That is just intentionally designing something in the game to be tedious and boring on purpose so they can rip-off players later by selling them the "fix."
Yes, I'm sure there is a tiny percentage of players out there that are into ULTRA realism, and like having really long travel times, but if you're going to make your game ULTRA real like that, you have go all the way. Selling an insta-port item on the item mall breaks that realism anyway, so there's no point to doing that besides gouging the players.
Your comment is exactly the point I am trying to make about the relationship between individual preferences, play styles and things like item malls. Lets take your suggestion of a player who wants to blow by content he subjectively finds boring so he can get to the end game, pvp in WoW or whatever it may be. This is precisely what drives the success of F2P models. Since mmorpgs have so many different game elements, you cant please everyone all the time. Some players love travel, others are inconvenienced by it, some players just want to PVP competitively so leveling becomes a chore, and so on.
The problem is my individual preference and play style is destroyed by F2P. My preference is that in-game achievement earns rewards, not money spent. The very existence of an item mall is counter to my play style and preferences.
Also this idea of skipping content to get to the end game is a joke, really. A game that lets you do that is not an MMORPG in my opinion. Guild Wars, for example, is NOT an MMORPG. It's fine to enjoy that type of game, but it really has no place in this discussion since it's not an MMORPG.
Some players love the PVP experience within the realms of a mmorpg. Not to be nasty, but Its silly and thoughtless to just banish them to Modern Warfare II. Its a thought-ending cliché that everyone is sick and tired of hearing, and it diminishes whatever you are trying to say. A multiplayer FPS is an entirely different experience.
Not really. And I'm not "banishing" anyone. My point is that a game like Guild Wars for example has a lot more in common with Bad Company 2 than it does with MMORPGs like EQ2, WoW or Lord of the Rings Online. Both Guild Wars and Bad Company 2 pit teams against each other in battle on an instanced server with a strictly limited # of players. They have similar objectives, such as capturing control points or "deathmatch." And Bad Company 2 is actually a little bit more "massively multi-player" than Guild Wars since it can have more players in a battle.
P.S> Games like WoW, because they charge a monthly fee, in my opinion, will be nickel and diming players if they add an item mall unless they go F2P .
I agree with you here. The lowest of the low is a game with an item mall on top of a subscription fee.
Not really. And I'm not "banishing" anyone. My point is that a game like Guild Wars for example has a lot more in common with Bad Company 2 than it does with MMORPGs like EQ2, WoW or Lord of the Rings Online. Both Guild Wars and Bad Company 2 pit teams against each other in battle on an instanced server with a strictly limited # of players. They have similar objectives, such as capturing control points or "deathmatch." And Bad Company 2 is actually a little bit more "massively multi-player" than Guild Wars since it can have more players in a battle.
Sorry but that was not your point. The point you tried to make was that players who did not really like many of the elements in an mmorpg and only wanted to get to the end game, be it PVP or whatever should go play a multiplayer FPS. That was the problem and a lame cliche we have heard over and over again which simply holds no truth.
As for the rest of your post, it seems that you actually agree with what I said although I'm not sure you realized it ;p
Ultimately, we have the same point, which is that if games are to be F2P then developers have to get it right, and even though many are making cash hand over fist, it is at the expense of newer players so it can't last forever. At least not at the scale its at now. So far, for the discriminating player, they have not got it yet.
A F2P discussion with no mention of League of Legends pricing model yet? I've seen DDO's listed a lot. While LoL isn't a MMO (it's a multiplayer battle arena game like DOTA) it shows how a F2P can work without providing too much of an advantage to a paying player versus a non-paying player, but providing enough incentives to get people to purchase items from their shop. League of Legends also seems to be the most popular F2P right now, especially if we take XFire data into account.
For those that don't know about League of Legends pricing model I'll break it down.
- There are 3 types of items available in the item shop. Those items include champion purchases, IP/XP "boosts", and skins.
- You earn IP in game which can be used to purchased items from the shop. You earn roughly 50-200 IP per game with double IP earned for the first win of the day (which resets 24 hours after the previous win), so you can earn 200-400 IP just for playing once a day.
- IP can be used to purchase both runes and champions. Skins and boosts cannot be purchased with IP.
- RP is used to purchase champions, boosts, and skins. Runes cannot be purchased with RP. RP is purchased through the game's shop using real life money.
- Runes are one of the game's form of progression. They add additional bonuses and you unlock more slots for them as you level up (another form of progression includes the mastery tree where you gain a point as you level). Since they cannot be purchased with RP, a paying player gains little advantage over a non-paying player.
- 10 champions are rotated for free (one is also available for free with a custom skin via a facebook promotion) each week. Every champion is put on rotation eventually, so even non-paying customers who didn't purchase their champion with RP or IP has an opportunity to eventually play every champion.
- Cost for champions are roughly $2, $5, $7-8 depending and are generally based off the difficulty of that champion. The IP costs are roughly 450, 1350, 3200, or 6400 so you can purchase some champions as early as 2 wins and others will require 30+ wins. Bundles are available which include about 20 champions for about $20-25.
- Skins costs anywhere from $5 - $15. They occassionally go on sale for 50% off.
Originally posted by Devros Sorry but that was not your point. The point you tried to make was that players who did not really like many of the elements in an mmorpg and only wanted to get to the end game, be it PVP or whatever should go play a multiplayer FPS.
Well, it's a good thing you were here to tell me what my point was. I was so rude to think that I get to say what my point is. Would you like me to go back and edit my original post to make it sound more like what you think I meant to say? Because all I said was that if I wanted instant action, I would play something like Bad Company 2 or Modern Warfare 2. I never said what other people should do. I realize that not everyone likes FPS games.
MMORPGs traditionally involve a lengthy level-up process, or some other form of character progression, before you get to the endgame. That's why they call it ENDgame. If fans of F2P are in favor of it because it makes it possible to skip leveling up and get right into the endgame, then they are in favor of fundamental changes to the MMORPG genre. There are many areas where MMORPGs could improve, but I like the general structure and rules of MMORPGs just the way they are. You're not supposed to be able to skip right to the endgame, just like you're not supposed to be able to skip to the final boss of a single-player game without using a cheat. IMO, saying "I like F2P because I want to skip to the endgame" is the same thing as saying "I like F2P because it lets me cheat."
As for the rest of your post, it seems that you actually agree with what I said although I'm not sure you realized it ;p Ultimately, we have the same point, which is that if games are to be F2P then developers have to get it right, and even though many are making cash hand over fist, it is at the expense of newer players so it can't last forever. At least not at the scale its at now. So far, for the discriminating player, they have not got it yet.
Yes, I do agree with this. But I think where we differ is that you see potential for F2P to be good in the near future, whereas I have no faith in developers to get it right or in players to force the developers to make it better. There are a lot of players who are not very discriminating, and are buying into F2P just the way it is. Blizzard sold how many of those stupid ponies for $25 each? When I saw that Blizzard put the mount up on their store, I laughed and thought "nobody is going to buy this!" When I heard that they made millions from that mount in just hours, I almost shit myself. I couldn't believe it. People will just give away their money for nothing if marketing puts enough spit-shine on it. F2P taps into that mass stupidity. Another reason to be against F2P: to protect gamers from themselves.
You're not supposed to be able to skip right to the endgame, just like you're not supposed to be able to skip to the final boss of a single-player game without using a cheat. IMO, saying "I like F2P because I want to skip to the endgame" is the same thing as saying "I like F2P because it lets me cheat."
Just wanted to point out... you can actually do that in the original Final Fantasy on NES :-P
Anyway, i think i should elaborate a bit on the type of stuff im talking about when i refer to games where you skip over the content/grind to get to "endgame". Im not referring to a game like WoW, or anything similar to a WoW clone where the end game basically consists of raiding and stuff.
Im speaking about completely different types of games. Ill use one of my previous examples again, RF Online. The PVE in the game is pretty bad, it has its fun/cool points, but there is almost no story/questing (usually 1 quest automatically given per level the instant you level up with a few side quests you can pick up along the way to earn rewards such as full sets of armor and some other perks). The best feature, and pretty much everyones reason for playing it (other than it being a decent mix of Sci-Fi & Fantasy pitted against eachother) is PvP. Im not talking just regular, run around ganking people in the world PvP (which it does have and is rather fun), or even arena style pvp. Most of their PvP revolves around something called a Chip War, which takes place 3 times a day and pits all 3 races in the game against eachother. That means everyone in the game from every race in one area for massive battles consisting of (depending on time of day and server pop) hundreds to thousands of people, with the Race Leaders / Archons commanding the players on their side. The 3 races are battling for contol of a central mine, which only the winner of the war can use to mine for ore in for the next 8 hours (Until next CW), and then the battle starts again.
Due to the game having been out awhile, in order to do anything besides just be cannon fodder getting 1 shotted by everyone else, you generally have to get to about level 45-50 (and at this point even that is pushing it for some classes) before you can hold your own and actually do anything useful. Considering that, and as i said PvE sucking and just being a grind, theres really no point to doing it and so most just power level to be able to participate in Chip Wars, because Chip Wars are the most fun part of the game, and when i played it was much more fun than almost any PvP ive seen in any other games, and it serves a huge purpose for strengthening your race by getting ore/resources thata re needed for upgrading equipment and stuff.
So yeah, as you were saying, you wouldnt even play a game where the content was pointless, RF is one example of a game where 90% of the game isnt appealing, but the high level PvP is awesome and worth playing the game for, at least IMO. That may not mean much to someone who isnt into pvp, or that type of pvp, but my personal taste for pvp makes getting to high level ASAP worth it in this game.
I know there are a lot of similar games out there, but at the same time youve got remember not every game is the same, there are different subgenres within the MMORPG genre, and even sub-subgenres within those. The different types have different crowds playing, different mechanics, different purposes/goals/objectives.
Originally posted by kaiser3282 You're not supposed to be able to skip right to the endgame, just like you're not supposed to be able to skip to the final boss of a single-player game without using a cheat. IMO, saying "I like F2P because I want to skip to the endgame" is the same thing as saying "I like F2P because it lets me cheat."
Just wanted to point out... you can actually do that in the original Final Fantasy on NES :-P
The exception that proves the rule.
...So yeah, as you were saying, you wouldnt even play a game where the content was pointless, RF is one example of a game where 90% of the game isnt appealing, but the high level PvP is awesome and worth playing the game for, at least IMO. That may not mean much to someone who isnt into pvp, or that type of pvp, but my personal taste for pvp makes getting to high level ASAP worth it in this game. I know there are a lot of similar games out there, but at the same time youve got remember not every game is the same, there are different subgenres within the MMORPG genre, and even sub-subgenres within those. The different types have different crowds playing, different mechanics, different purposes/goals/objectives.
Yes, this is a game that doesn't interest me. I can see how that endgame would be fun and I get what you're saying, but shouldn't we as consumers demand better quality than a game where 90% of the content is terrible? Instead, you are OK with paying extra for the privilege of skipping through the stuff that they did a lousy job on. What if a single-player shooter came out where the first 20 levels were so poorly designed that they were tedious and awful, and then the company said "OK, we'll give you a patch to quickly skip those awful levels, but it'll cost you an extra $20..." FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU!!
But OK, different strokes for different folks. I guess there are a lot of people who are OK with an MMORPG like that, and if F2P was going to remain limited to that sort of niche Asian-developed pvp-focused game with poor PvE, then we'd have no problem. However, this debate exists because F2P is growing, and it's edging its way into my style of MMORPG. In fact, it's threatening to entirely eliminate my style of MMORPG, which I think is what Garrett Fuller was saying in the article that started this thread. Maybe these 90%-of-suck F2P games are going to be the norm in the future. As long as gamers are willing to pay extra for the benefit of skipping over crappy gameplay, why should they bother making games with good gameplay?
You're not supposed to be able to skip right to the endgame, just like you're not supposed to be able to skip to the final boss of a single-player game without using a cheat. IMO, saying "I like F2P because I want to skip to the endgame" is the same thing as saying "I like F2P because it lets me cheat."
Just wanted to point out... you can actually do that in the original Final Fantasy on NES :-P
The exception that proves the rule.
...So yeah, as you were saying, you wouldnt even play a game where the content was pointless, RF is one example of a game where 90% of the game isnt appealing, but the high level PvP is awesome and worth playing the game for, at least IMO. That may not mean much to someone who isnt into pvp, or that type of pvp, but my personal taste for pvp makes getting to high level ASAP worth it in this game.
I know there are a lot of similar games out there, but at the same time youve got remember not every game is the same, there are different subgenres within the MMORPG genre, and even sub-subgenres within those. The different types have different crowds playing, different mechanics, different purposes/goals/objectives.
Yes, this is a game that doesn't interest me. I can see how that endgame would be fun and I get what you're saying, but shouldn't we as consumers demand better quality than a game where 90% of the content is terrible? Instead, you are OK with paying extra for the privilege of skipping through the stuff that they did a lousy job on. What if a single-player shooter came out where the first 20 levels were so poorly designed that they were tedious and awful, and then the company said "OK, we'll give you a patch to quickly skip those awful levels, but it'll cost you an extra $20..." FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU!!
But OK, different strokes for different folks. I guess there are a lot of people who are OK with an MMORPG like that, and if F2P was going to remain limited to that sort of niche Asian-developed pvp-focused game with poor PvE, then we'd have no problem. However, this debate exists because F2P is growing, and it's edging its way into my style of MMORPG. In fact, it's threatening to entirely eliminate my style of MMORPG, which I think is what Garrett Fuller was saying in the article that started this thread. Maybe these 90%-of-suck F2P games are going to be the norm in the future. As long as gamers are willing to pay extra for the benefit of skipping over crappy gameplay, why should they bother making games with good gameplay?
You're kind of misunderstanding some of my points. The whole RF being all about PvP thing is just an example of the type of game where its worth skipping most of the content to rush to end game, but im not saying thats the norm for F2Ps. Ive played, at least somewhat, probably about half or slightly more of the F2P games listed on MMORPG.com (and about an equal amount of P2P), and while there are some that follow a similar model to RF, there are also some really good ones full of fun content, things to do, other reasons to play besides endgame. Hell, ive played several that offer easily 3x what some so called AAA P2P games offer in terms of content & features.
Ive seen both ends of the spectrum many times, poor quality cash grab games as well as high quality well designed games that simply offer an alternative to the P2P model. The trend however has been slowly leaning more and more towards the latter. It's true, F2P used to offer nothing but poor quality copies of eachother and followed the "Pay 2 Win" model, and i used to look at them with the same disdain that many others still do, but that stereotype no longer applies to all F2P games as the subgenre has expanded and we see more variation in the types of games being made as well as better pricing models and alternative methods of accessing cash shop items.
Now, im not saying every new F2P game is, or will ever be, anything more than a craptastic way for devs to get their hands in peoples wallets, but i do believe over the next few years we will keep seeing an increase of more well done projects.
Also, one thing people don't seem to remember, or are even aware of (due to either age, or just not playing MMOs until recently), is what happened in the past when not only MMORPGs, but pretty much all forms/genres of online gaming started becoming popular. While there were those who had no problem with it, there were also many who had opinions such as "Im not going to pay a subscription for ANY game, it's just a ripoff to fill the pockets of the companies, they should only charge for the game itself". And look at subscription services such as Xbox Live which are required to play console games online, the same thing was said about those services as well. They were viewed as nothing more than greed by many (and in some cases were), especially when on the original Xbox you had to pay, whereas on PS2 they offered online gaming for free (though it did tend to be not as well done / supported as Xbox Live, but it was still a sub vs free thing). However over time, the whole "paying monthly to play a game i already paid for" has become widely accepted due to amongst other reasons, an improvement (arguable of late) in the quality of the games themselves as well as online gaming features, the number of people playing, and the number of MMOs & online supported games. Now rather than online gaming / MMOs being a small crowd of people willing to pay the subs, there are millions and millions doing it. IMO F2P is pretty much going through the same process, although perhaps at a slower rate than the above mentioned things, but regardless they are improving in general.
I think in the end, most of us will have 3 main options to pick from when it comes to high quality games made by good companies. P2P, F2P, and some form of hybrid of the 2, and while it may not be the current state, in a few years there will be little to no seperation between the "quality" of the games or one type being any "better" than the other, it will simply come down to a personal preference of both the individual features in each game & whichever pricing model works best for the individual.
Originally posted by kaiser3282 You're kind of misunderstanding some of my points. The whole RF being all about PvP thing is just an example of the type of game where its worth skipping most of the content to rush to end game, but im not saying thats the norm for F2Ps. Ive played, at least somewhat, probably about half or slightly more of the F2P games listed on MMORPG.com (and about an equal amount of P2P), and while there are some that follow a similar model to RF, there are also some really good ones full of fun content, things to do, other reasons to play besides endgame.
Give me your top 3 examples of the best F2P games that are fun throughout and not just for the endgame, are not too grindy, and not too "Pay 2 Win." I'd like to try them and see for myself. If such games exist, they are the best kept secret in the MMORPG community.
I think I'm starting to understand a little bit more about P2P and F2P thanks to this thread, so I'm going to take a stab at a summary of the issue here...
Game designers are asking for two things from players: time and money. If the game is designed for P2P, the developer wants more time from the player. The longer they can keep me engaged in the game, the longer I keep paying my monthly subscription fee. If I could consume all of the content quickly, I might get bored or feel that I've "beaten" the game, and I might quit. So time sinks are a strategic element of P2P game design. Delaying my progress through the game content ensures that I stick around longer.
In F2P design, time can be replaced by money. The time sinks are still there, but the item mall is designed with items that let you pay to get around the time sinks. If there is a traveling time sink in the game, the item mall contains an item that lets you travel instantly. If there are monsters that take a long time to kill, there's a sword on the item mall that lets you kill them faster. They rely on players deciding that their time is worth more to them than their money.
Fans of P2P argue that by enduring the time sinks in a P2P game, they are earning their way through the game rather than just buying their way through. I think that's basically true, but I also think that there's not a lot of skill required to endure most time sinks. It just means that those players were able to devote the many hours necessary to advance in the game. It is an achievement, but not really one that's worthy of much more than a pat on the back.
So the main difference between P2P and F2P is time and money -- if you have more time and less money, you probably want P2P. If you have more money and less time, you probably want F2P.
That would be cut and dry, but there's one more element and that's overall quality. The P2P designer wants players to endure the game's time sinks. How do you get players to keep coming back and playing through the same time sinks over and over again for months and years? You try to make them as fun as possible. You know if the players get bored, they're going to start to leave the game. The P2P designer's focus is on keeping the content time-consuming and as fun as possible so they'll stick around long-term.
The F2P designer, on the other hand, wants players to pay to get around the time sinks. How do you get players to pay up to avoid having to repeat the same time sinks over and over? Make the time sinks as tedious and boring as possible. If the time sinks are fun, more players will decide to just play through them and not buy any items. The F2P designer's focus is on keeping the content time-consuming and tedious and boring enough to convince players to buy items to help them get by the time sink faster.
The last thing that I've seen here is that some supporters of F2P think that the quality will improve in the future. I don't think so. If the quality of gameplay improves in F2P games, if they are not tedious grinds and all of the gameplay is enjoyable throughout, the item mall loses its value and the game makes less money.
Comments
Seems to me that the issue is simply conflicting play styles. What you call being "stuck in the old way" I call "the way MMORPGs are meant to be played." When I play an MMORPG, I want a persistant world that runs on a set of rules that favors realism, long-term goals and achievements, and long-term character development and story. The idea of skipping all of the content to get to high level endgame PvP is ridiculous to me. It seems odd to play MMORPGs for quick, instant action. If that's what I was after, I would play an action game like Bad Company 2 or Modern Warfare 2. I don't think a game that encourages skipping to the end like that and just playing end-game PvP out of the box isn't really an MMORPG, at least not by my definition.
I've played DDO, but not the other two. These exceptions are certainly more palatable than a straight F2P model. I would welcome a trend of F2P games in which item mall currency can be earned in game, but there are still a lot of issues with that. For example, how much in-game "grind" does it take to earn item mall currency? No doubt that varies a lot from one game to another. If it takes a month to grind out $1 of currency, it's not worth it. Rohan sounds like the opposite extreme -- if it's relatively easy to to earn $20-$50 selling items, why would anyone spend real money? And if people start to catch on that they can craft those items and sell them for $20-$50 a pop, the supply of the items goes up and the price is driven down.
Big difference -- in the P2P game I have spent months or years playing the game in order to earn the items and get to the point where I have the best gear. Having the best gear isn't what's important, the journey to get there is the fun part. Along the way I will have gone through several different sets of upgrades, found many different items with various properties and fun special abilities, played through tons of quests, dungeons and raids, made friends with players who helped me along the way, and I'd feel a sense of accomplishment after each new item I earn and each set of armor that I complete. In F2P, you just buy the end gear and skip the journey. So the way I see it, earning max gear in P2P = months or years of playing the game to earn the best gear and feeling a sense of accomplishment. Earning max gear in F2P = 10 minutes of spending money.
pvp? - what rewards can you earn for winning, or do you just play for fun?
crafting? - what do you craft if you already bought the best gear on the item mall?
roleplaying? - meh
helping others? - helping them with what? pvp with no rewards? crafting stuff they don't need?
Most of those games are hybrids, meaning that they have those cosmetic item malls on top of a subscription fee. These may be the worst "nickle-and-dime" offenders of all -- you buy the box, you buy the subscription, and now you have to pay even more to make your character look nice. Cryptic is the worst offender with Champions and STO. City of Heroes and City of Villains fits this category too I think. Even WoW is in this category nowadays, with its $25 horse and $10 non-combat pets.
I've never heard of a F2P that has no subscription fee and only cosmetic items on the item mall. In a game like that I guess the characters must be hideously ugly until you dress them up with item mall stuff, or there would be no way a game like that could sustain itself.
If the gameplay is good the players will come. However, when an entire game is being designed around selling virtual items, is anyone on the team thinking about gameplay?
best line ever written?
@CayneJobb
Just wanted to touch on a few points in your reply without (hopefully) going into long rants again :-P
1) The reasons for playing MMOs, and the specific MMOs you play vary from person to person. I play various types of MMOS, as well as many games besides MMOs, all for different reasons, and i understand others do the same, im just speaking from my own personal view here. As i mentioned, IF a game is good enough, and i actually do enjoy the journey, i do exactly thata nd enjoy it without skipping over content, however there are a lot of games that fit the stereotype of "the game doesnt begin until endgame", and in most of those cases there is no real point to playing through the content (no good story, little to no progression other than level & gear, nothing but pointless grind quests, etc). I also sometimes jump into an MMO for no other reason but to play with my brother or a couple of friends, and have no real interest in the game outsid eof the fact that they play it, so in those cases i will skip as much as i can to catch up to them, and when theyre not on i go back to my MMO of choice for actual playing.
2) Agreed, giving you the options of eitehr is the best way to go, rather than giving no choice but to pay for anything. RoM, the grind isnt too bad, just requires a bit of luck usually. Same goes for Rohan too, although the level grind itself in the game is (or at least was, havent played in a long time) pretty massive. As for the price of the stuff i was selling, granted that wasnt for everything, some things only went for a couple bucks, but some of the better stuff i made sold for those prices. But, that was with a little bit of luck, and a lot of trial and error to get my mastery of their systems down to where i could produce such high quality stuff. My 1st 2 characters in the game also had the best equipment on the server by far (about 50% better compared to other equal level, and considered "good" geared characters) for many months, allowing me to in some cases hold my own solo vs entire guilds for short periods of time in their Township battles. I was a bit of an exception for the first few months the game was out, and never shared my crafting methods with others even within my guild, and would instead take requests for making them items myself. The average player wont be making stuff that can sell for quite that much constantly, but it can be done with some know how.
3) PVP, Crafting, Helping others, etc - Crafting depends on the game and which type you pick up, but some have purpose to crafting outside of gear, such as making potions/scrolls and things like that. Also crafting to help guildies/friends with gear.
For the PvP, in some games there are real achievements to be earned from pvp, some meaningless, some with lots of importance. Using RF Online as an example again, they have an election system for a Race Leader and his Counsel every week on each of the 3 races. The most important thing in order to run for Archon (their term for leaders), you have to have more CP (Contribution Points, earned like 99% through PvP kills) than other people applying to run as well. There are limited spots on the registration, and if anyone registers with higher CP than you, you get knocked off the list and cant even be voted for. Other games also have similar systems, or variations of it for other purposes.
Helping others - as i mentioned earlier, i do play with my brother and other friends (RL, not just MMO friends) and i do help them, as well as those i meet ingame with things like taking down bosses, running raids/dungeons/instances, level grinding, loot/gear farming, and running organized PvP groups.
First off, I don’t think anyone has said they want to skip content that is truly deemed “great” just to get to the end game for what you call a “quick fix”. That’s a pointless fabrication. The issue applies more to the trend in F2P games of painful grinding and other time sinks which must be endured to experience the anemic content sprinkled throughout the game, in order to reach the “promised” fun of the end game, if any.
Still, while many subscription games like WoW have a ton of great content at all levels, they can also be guilty of painful time sinks that don’t add any value to the game. The real issue is when some things are a painful time sink for some, but fun or enjoyable for others. Take travel for instance. In WoW, you can argue that travel is a big part of immersion, leads to awe and the enjoyment of the majesty of the game world for starters. For players who don’t have as much time to play, or even if they are simply impatient, travel can really suck. You won’t ever convince them to like it. And you don’t need to. Whether or not a person enjoys travel is subjective, so to take away choice punishes a portion of your players. This is where an item mall could be of use, offering something that allows you to avoid long painful trips. Traditionally players who dislike travel either bite the bullet or they might eventually quit. With a choice provided by an item mall or what have you, the dedicated portion will happily pay to avoid travel because it has value to them. Even those who enjoy travel might pay when they find themselves short of playing time. Please refrain from defending travel as it’s not the point of the discussion. Also, i am not suggesting WoW have an item mall because they charge subs, if they were F2P then yes.
Your comment is exactly the point I am trying to make about the relationship between individual preferences, play styles and things like item malls. Let’s take your suggestion of a player who wants to blow by content he subjectively finds boring so he can get to the “end game”, pvp in WoW or whatever it may be. This is precisely what drives the success of F2P models. Since mmorpgs have so many different game elements, you can’t please everyone all the time. Some players love travel, others are inconvenienced by it, some players just want to PVP competitively so leveling becomes a chore, and so on.
Successful Item malls or whatever sales methods succeed because of the fact consumers have different needs, play styles and preferences. All players do not play mmorpgs the same, they find their own enjoyment in their own ways, as is demonstrated in any thread on mmorpg.com.
And finally…
Some players love the PVP experience within the realms of a mmorpg. Not to be nasty, but It’s silly and thoughtless to just “banish” them to Modern Warfare II. It’s a thought-ending cliché that everyone is sick and tired of hearing, and it diminishes whatever you are trying to say. A multiplayer FPS is an entirely different experience.
P.S> Games like WoW, because they charge a monthly fee, in my opinion, will be nickel and diming players if they add an item mall unless they go F2P . I think item malls should be reserved for F2P games and when done right can allow them to compete for player-bases with games like WoW and still be financially viable, which is exactly what they are doing, they just need to make better games. WoW is at the top of the food chain so they don't need to go F2P since they still hold pricing power. Until something truly better comes out.
Dev
www.TXcomics.com "Your daily webcomics broadcast"
Hmmm .... F2P seems like a greedy and shallow commercialization mechanism, more often than not, to squeeze more from a shallow base, eventually.
I always come back to Guild Wars, in thought. Their business model of attracting players with rich content, rather than shallowing the perception of their game and the entertainment experience with tchotkes. And the result? One of the most loyal and largest fan-bases in the mmorpg market.
http://www.guildwars.com/events/tradeshows/gc2007/gcspeech.php
Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true – you know it, and they know it. Gamers may buy the argument that your MMO requires a subscription fee, if you can tell them what they are getting for their money.
With Guild Wars we ask players to make a choice only one time, and that choice is whether to buy the game, or not to buy the game. While we don't enjoy a recurring revenue stream each month, we do benefit from the fact that most Guild Wars players come back to the game when we release new content, so we are less concerned about players putting the game down for a few months. Players don't have to decide whether to stay married or get divorced, they just have to decide whether they want to play today or not. Beyond the benefit of a lower pain threshold to get into the game, this is the core strength of the Guild Wars business model, and one of the reasons it continues to thrive when many other subscription-based MMOs are struggling.
I love Guildwars. They are also, F2P, but they follow the feature limited demo model. Then they are F2P when compared to Subscription games. They were innovative which all companies need to be right now. To offset not having subscription costs, they also have a form of item mall which sells:
Costumes
Xunlai Storage Panes
Makeover Pack
Extreme Makeover
Name Change
Pet Unlock Pack
Bonus Mission Pack
Guild Wars Merchandise
Skill and Item Unlock Packs
In addition, the GW revenue stream comes in the form of premium content when they release expansions.
If they wanted, they could release GW2 for free and then charge for expansions and have stuff in the item mall like now, which players would happily pay for. This would probably increase their player base massively.
We like GW because the game is good and they did it right so we trust them.
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One of many reasons why im beggining to love Anet and GW. I never paid much attention to either in the past, and never gave GW a shot, mostly due to playing too many games and just passing it up as something that didn't jump out as appealing to me. But when i started hearing all the recent news about GW2, I couldnt resist giving GW1 a shot, and i fell in love with the game my first day playing. Granted, it may not be everyone's type of game because of things like instancing (i used to feel the same until i logged into GW1), but it really is a great game in everything that it does, and in the past couple weeks Arenanet has gone and snagged themselves another loyal fan, and from the looks of the forums here I'm far from the only one. The way theyre handling things in both their old game and their new game, i dont think ive ever seen things handled so well from any other (supposedly) AAA Developer. Definitely not anytime in the past 4-5 years.
OK, here I go again...
I simply would have no desire at all to play a game like you described here. I'd flat out call that an awful game, and I'd only play it long enough to realize that I wasted a lot of time downloading and installing that garbage. Basically at the start of any MMO I have to go through leveling a character, and if that part isn't fun for me, then I'm gone. I uninstall the game and I'm on to something else already. There are a lot of games out there, why would I continue playing something with "no good story, little to no progression other than level & gear, nothing but pointless grind quests, etc." Gah. DO NOT WANT.
Again, like I described above, a game like this I just wouldn't play. Period. And you've described another reason why I hate F2P: "the trend in F2P games of painful grinding and other time sinks which must be endured." Horrible. I see this with almost all of the F2P games that come out of Asia. Leveling that is very grindy, tedious, and boring, and sometimes with quests that were poorly translated to English. Ugh. I can't even last ten minutes in games like that. It makes my head hurt just imagining grinding it out all the way to the endgame. If I absolutely had to, then buying my way to the endgame would probably be the only way I could do it, but why in the world would I even consider that? "Leveling in this game sucks, I'm not enjoying this game at all, it's grindy, it's boring, so let me get out my credit card and spend more money on it." Wait, what?
It sounds to me like a major argument for F2P is "leveling up sucks in F2P games, so I want to be able to buy my way to the endgame." I wonder, if F2P games were designed better would they cease to be sustainable because players would no longer feel the need to buy their way past all of the awful content?
Here's a hypothetical question... What if there was no harsh grinds and no endgame, and leveling up characters from 0 to 100 was the whole game and it was full of great content, story, etc. Would you still want it to be F2P with an item mall, or is it possible that in this situation you might prefer a subscription plan?
Not a good example. Travel in WoW is pretty negligible. There are dozens of ways to travel instantly such as hearthstones, meeting stones, warlocks, and various items and spells. Even without all of that, fast flying mounts get you around pretty quickly.
Personally, I don't like a lot of travel in MMORPGs. And in my opinion, designing the game with very long, tedious travel and then selling an instant port potion or something on an item mall is total bull crap, and I wouldn't play a game like that. That is just intentionally designing something in the game to be tedious and boring on purpose so they can rip-off players later by selling them the "fix."
Yes, I'm sure there is a tiny percentage of players out there that are into ULTRA realism, and like having really long travel times, but if you're going to make your game ULTRA real like that, you have go all the way. Selling an insta-port item on the item mall breaks that realism anyway, so there's no point to doing that besides gouging the players.
The problem is my individual preference and play style is destroyed by F2P. My preference is that in-game achievement earns rewards, not money spent. The very existence of an item mall is counter to my play style and preferences.
Also this idea of skipping content to get to the end game is a joke, really. A game that lets you do that is not an MMORPG in my opinion. Guild Wars, for example, is NOT an MMORPG. It's fine to enjoy that type of game, but it really has no place in this discussion since it's not an MMORPG.
Not really. And I'm not "banishing" anyone. My point is that a game like Guild Wars for example has a lot more in common with Bad Company 2 than it does with MMORPGs like EQ2, WoW or Lord of the Rings Online. Both Guild Wars and Bad Company 2 pit teams against each other in battle on an instanced server with a strictly limited # of players. They have similar objectives, such as capturing control points or "deathmatch." And Bad Company 2 is actually a little bit more "massively multi-player" than Guild Wars since it can have more players in a battle.
I agree with you here. The lowest of the low is a game with an item mall on top of a subscription fee.
Sorry but that was not your point. The point you tried to make was that players who did not really like many of the elements in an mmorpg and only wanted to get to the end game, be it PVP or whatever should go play a multiplayer FPS. That was the problem and a lame cliche we have heard over and over again which simply holds no truth.
As for the rest of your post, it seems that you actually agree with what I said although I'm not sure you realized it ;p
Ultimately, we have the same point, which is that if games are to be F2P then developers have to get it right, and even though many are making cash hand over fist, it is at the expense of newer players so it can't last forever. At least not at the scale its at now. So far, for the discriminating player, they have not got it yet.
www.TXcomics.com "Your daily webcomics broadcast"
A F2P discussion with no mention of League of Legends pricing model yet? I've seen DDO's listed a lot. While LoL isn't a MMO (it's a multiplayer battle arena game like DOTA) it shows how a F2P can work without providing too much of an advantage to a paying player versus a non-paying player, but providing enough incentives to get people to purchase items from their shop. League of Legends also seems to be the most popular F2P right now, especially if we take XFire data into account.
For those that don't know about League of Legends pricing model I'll break it down.
- There are 3 types of items available in the item shop. Those items include champion purchases, IP/XP "boosts", and skins.
- You earn IP in game which can be used to purchased items from the shop. You earn roughly 50-200 IP per game with double IP earned for the first win of the day (which resets 24 hours after the previous win), so you can earn 200-400 IP just for playing once a day.
- IP can be used to purchase both runes and champions. Skins and boosts cannot be purchased with IP.
- RP is used to purchase champions, boosts, and skins. Runes cannot be purchased with RP. RP is purchased through the game's shop using real life money.
- Runes are one of the game's form of progression. They add additional bonuses and you unlock more slots for them as you level up (another form of progression includes the mastery tree where you gain a point as you level). Since they cannot be purchased with RP, a paying player gains little advantage over a non-paying player.
- 10 champions are rotated for free (one is also available for free with a custom skin via a facebook promotion) each week. Every champion is put on rotation eventually, so even non-paying customers who didn't purchase their champion with RP or IP has an opportunity to eventually play every champion.
- Cost for champions are roughly $2, $5, $7-8 depending and are generally based off the difficulty of that champion. The IP costs are roughly 450, 1350, 3200, or 6400 so you can purchase some champions as early as 2 wins and others will require 30+ wins. Bundles are available which include about 20 champions for about $20-25.
- Skins costs anywhere from $5 - $15. They occassionally go on sale for 50% off.
Well, it's a good thing you were here to tell me what my point was. I was so rude to think that I get to say what my point is. Would you like me to go back and edit my original post to make it sound more like what you think I meant to say? Because all I said was that if I wanted instant action, I would play something like Bad Company 2 or Modern Warfare 2. I never said what other people should do. I realize that not everyone likes FPS games.
MMORPGs traditionally involve a lengthy level-up process, or some other form of character progression, before you get to the endgame. That's why they call it ENDgame. If fans of F2P are in favor of it because it makes it possible to skip leveling up and get right into the endgame, then they are in favor of fundamental changes to the MMORPG genre. There are many areas where MMORPGs could improve, but I like the general structure and rules of MMORPGs just the way they are. You're not supposed to be able to skip right to the endgame, just like you're not supposed to be able to skip to the final boss of a single-player game without using a cheat. IMO, saying "I like F2P because I want to skip to the endgame" is the same thing as saying "I like F2P because it lets me cheat."
Yes, I do agree with this. But I think where we differ is that you see potential for F2P to be good in the near future, whereas I have no faith in developers to get it right or in players to force the developers to make it better. There are a lot of players who are not very discriminating, and are buying into F2P just the way it is. Blizzard sold how many of those stupid ponies for $25 each? When I saw that Blizzard put the mount up on their store, I laughed and thought "nobody is going to buy this!" When I heard that they made millions from that mount in just hours, I almost shit myself. I couldn't believe it. People will just give away their money for nothing if marketing puts enough spit-shine on it. F2P taps into that mass stupidity. Another reason to be against F2P: to protect gamers from themselves.
Just wanted to point out... you can actually do that in the original Final Fantasy on NES :-P
Anyway, i think i should elaborate a bit on the type of stuff im talking about when i refer to games where you skip over the content/grind to get to "endgame". Im not referring to a game like WoW, or anything similar to a WoW clone where the end game basically consists of raiding and stuff.
Im speaking about completely different types of games. Ill use one of my previous examples again, RF Online. The PVE in the game is pretty bad, it has its fun/cool points, but there is almost no story/questing (usually 1 quest automatically given per level the instant you level up with a few side quests you can pick up along the way to earn rewards such as full sets of armor and some other perks). The best feature, and pretty much everyones reason for playing it (other than it being a decent mix of Sci-Fi & Fantasy pitted against eachother) is PvP. Im not talking just regular, run around ganking people in the world PvP (which it does have and is rather fun), or even arena style pvp. Most of their PvP revolves around something called a Chip War, which takes place 3 times a day and pits all 3 races in the game against eachother. That means everyone in the game from every race in one area for massive battles consisting of (depending on time of day and server pop) hundreds to thousands of people, with the Race Leaders / Archons commanding the players on their side. The 3 races are battling for contol of a central mine, which only the winner of the war can use to mine for ore in for the next 8 hours (Until next CW), and then the battle starts again.
Due to the game having been out awhile, in order to do anything besides just be cannon fodder getting 1 shotted by everyone else, you generally have to get to about level 45-50 (and at this point even that is pushing it for some classes) before you can hold your own and actually do anything useful. Considering that, and as i said PvE sucking and just being a grind, theres really no point to doing it and so most just power level to be able to participate in Chip Wars, because Chip Wars are the most fun part of the game, and when i played it was much more fun than almost any PvP ive seen in any other games, and it serves a huge purpose for strengthening your race by getting ore/resources thata re needed for upgrading equipment and stuff.
So yeah, as you were saying, you wouldnt even play a game where the content was pointless, RF is one example of a game where 90% of the game isnt appealing, but the high level PvP is awesome and worth playing the game for, at least IMO. That may not mean much to someone who isnt into pvp, or that type of pvp, but my personal taste for pvp makes getting to high level ASAP worth it in this game.
I know there are a lot of similar games out there, but at the same time youve got remember not every game is the same, there are different subgenres within the MMORPG genre, and even sub-subgenres within those. The different types have different crowds playing, different mechanics, different purposes/goals/objectives.
The exception that proves the rule.
Yes, this is a game that doesn't interest me. I can see how that endgame would be fun and I get what you're saying, but shouldn't we as consumers demand better quality than a game where 90% of the content is terrible? Instead, you are OK with paying extra for the privilege of skipping through the stuff that they did a lousy job on. What if a single-player shooter came out where the first 20 levels were so poorly designed that they were tedious and awful, and then the company said "OK, we'll give you a patch to quickly skip those awful levels, but it'll cost you an extra $20..." FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU!!
But OK, different strokes for different folks. I guess there are a lot of people who are OK with an MMORPG like that, and if F2P was going to remain limited to that sort of niche Asian-developed pvp-focused game with poor PvE, then we'd have no problem. However, this debate exists because F2P is growing, and it's edging its way into my style of MMORPG. In fact, it's threatening to entirely eliminate my style of MMORPG, which I think is what Garrett Fuller was saying in the article that started this thread. Maybe these 90%-of-suck F2P games are going to be the norm in the future. As long as gamers are willing to pay extra for the benefit of skipping over crappy gameplay, why should they bother making games with good gameplay?
You're kind of misunderstanding some of my points. The whole RF being all about PvP thing is just an example of the type of game where its worth skipping most of the content to rush to end game, but im not saying thats the norm for F2Ps. Ive played, at least somewhat, probably about half or slightly more of the F2P games listed on MMORPG.com (and about an equal amount of P2P), and while there are some that follow a similar model to RF, there are also some really good ones full of fun content, things to do, other reasons to play besides endgame. Hell, ive played several that offer easily 3x what some so called AAA P2P games offer in terms of content & features.
Ive seen both ends of the spectrum many times, poor quality cash grab games as well as high quality well designed games that simply offer an alternative to the P2P model. The trend however has been slowly leaning more and more towards the latter. It's true, F2P used to offer nothing but poor quality copies of eachother and followed the "Pay 2 Win" model, and i used to look at them with the same disdain that many others still do, but that stereotype no longer applies to all F2P games as the subgenre has expanded and we see more variation in the types of games being made as well as better pricing models and alternative methods of accessing cash shop items.
Now, im not saying every new F2P game is, or will ever be, anything more than a craptastic way for devs to get their hands in peoples wallets, but i do believe over the next few years we will keep seeing an increase of more well done projects.
Also, one thing people don't seem to remember, or are even aware of (due to either age, or just not playing MMOs until recently), is what happened in the past when not only MMORPGs, but pretty much all forms/genres of online gaming started becoming popular. While there were those who had no problem with it, there were also many who had opinions such as "Im not going to pay a subscription for ANY game, it's just a ripoff to fill the pockets of the companies, they should only charge for the game itself". And look at subscription services such as Xbox Live which are required to play console games online, the same thing was said about those services as well. They were viewed as nothing more than greed by many (and in some cases were), especially when on the original Xbox you had to pay, whereas on PS2 they offered online gaming for free (though it did tend to be not as well done / supported as Xbox Live, but it was still a sub vs free thing). However over time, the whole "paying monthly to play a game i already paid for" has become widely accepted due to amongst other reasons, an improvement (arguable of late) in the quality of the games themselves as well as online gaming features, the number of people playing, and the number of MMOs & online supported games. Now rather than online gaming / MMOs being a small crowd of people willing to pay the subs, there are millions and millions doing it. IMO F2P is pretty much going through the same process, although perhaps at a slower rate than the above mentioned things, but regardless they are improving in general.
I think in the end, most of us will have 3 main options to pick from when it comes to high quality games made by good companies. P2P, F2P, and some form of hybrid of the 2, and while it may not be the current state, in a few years there will be little to no seperation between the "quality" of the games or one type being any "better" than the other, it will simply come down to a personal preference of both the individual features in each game & whichever pricing model works best for the individual.
Give me your top 3 examples of the best F2P games that are fun throughout and not just for the endgame, are not too grindy, and not too "Pay 2 Win." I'd like to try them and see for myself. If such games exist, they are the best kept secret in the MMORPG community.
I think I'm starting to understand a little bit more about P2P and F2P thanks to this thread, so I'm going to take a stab at a summary of the issue here...
Game designers are asking for two things from players: time and money. If the game is designed for P2P, the developer wants more time from the player. The longer they can keep me engaged in the game, the longer I keep paying my monthly subscription fee. If I could consume all of the content quickly, I might get bored or feel that I've "beaten" the game, and I might quit. So time sinks are a strategic element of P2P game design. Delaying my progress through the game content ensures that I stick around longer.
In F2P design, time can be replaced by money. The time sinks are still there, but the item mall is designed with items that let you pay to get around the time sinks. If there is a traveling time sink in the game, the item mall contains an item that lets you travel instantly. If there are monsters that take a long time to kill, there's a sword on the item mall that lets you kill them faster. They rely on players deciding that their time is worth more to them than their money.
Fans of P2P argue that by enduring the time sinks in a P2P game, they are earning their way through the game rather than just buying their way through. I think that's basically true, but I also think that there's not a lot of skill required to endure most time sinks. It just means that those players were able to devote the many hours necessary to advance in the game. It is an achievement, but not really one that's worthy of much more than a pat on the back.
So the main difference between P2P and F2P is time and money -- if you have more time and less money, you probably want P2P. If you have more money and less time, you probably want F2P.
That would be cut and dry, but there's one more element and that's overall quality. The P2P designer wants players to endure the game's time sinks. How do you get players to keep coming back and playing through the same time sinks over and over again for months and years? You try to make them as fun as possible. You know if the players get bored, they're going to start to leave the game. The P2P designer's focus is on keeping the content time-consuming and as fun as possible so they'll stick around long-term.
The F2P designer, on the other hand, wants players to pay to get around the time sinks. How do you get players to pay up to avoid having to repeat the same time sinks over and over? Make the time sinks as tedious and boring as possible. If the time sinks are fun, more players will decide to just play through them and not buy any items. The F2P designer's focus is on keeping the content time-consuming and tedious and boring enough to convince players to buy items to help them get by the time sink faster.
The last thing that I've seen here is that some supporters of F2P think that the quality will improve in the future. I don't think so. If the quality of gameplay improves in F2P games, if they are not tedious grinds and all of the gameplay is enjoyable throughout, the item mall loses its value and the game makes less money.