Another title trying to ride the coat tails of Anet. GW is and will alwasy be F2P..so will GW2. The big difference is...while theyhave an online store you can buy character renames, appearance change,extra storage...NONE of that stuff is needed to play the game..You odnt have potions and buffs that are only obtained through real money.
This is just another company trying to get in on the bandwagon cuas they know their games are going under when GW2 and SW:ToR go live...those will be the best F2P and subscription out there
Nifty. Another game that I wanted to play again for a bit, but didn't want to pay a sub is going F2P/hybrid. Hope it's a slightly better system than EQ2X. Here's hoping that Everquest goes hybrid, soon....although I'm not sure what they would do on the hybrid side of things.
I bought PotBS for $50 when it came out, and didn't resub. Some of it was fun, but the ground combat was so bad that I didn't go back. I heard they polished it up a bit, but if a feature like that doesn't feel any better than an afterthought add on, just tell us that it'll be added on in a few months or a year, when it's done.
Nifty. Another game that I wanted to play again for a bit, but didn't want to pay a sub is going F2P/hybrid. Hope it's a slightly better system than EQ2X. Here's hoping that Everquest goes hybrid, soon....although I'm not sure what they would do on the hybrid side of things.
I bought PotBS for $50 when it came out, and didn't resub. Some of it was fun, but the ground combat was so bad that I didn't go back. I heard they polished it up a bit, but if a feature like that doesn't feel any better than an afterthought add on, just tell us that it'll be added on in a few months or a year, when it's done.
bought it at launch as well, but it felt like a online version of Sid Meier's Pirates!
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
well i have to say im kinda annoyed, games converting like this are giving F2P games a bad rep -_-. P2P should stay P2P, F2P should stay F2P, never touched a P2P game in my life, probably wont touch these converts eather.
Nifty. Another game that I wanted to play again for a bit, but didn't want to pay a sub is going F2P/hybrid. Hope it's a slightly better system than EQ2X. Here's hoping that Everquest goes hybrid, soon....although I'm not sure what they would do on the hybrid side of things.
I bought PotBS for $50 when it came out, and didn't resub. Some of it was fun, but the ground combat was so bad that I didn't go back. I heard they polished it up a bit, but if a feature like that doesn't feel any better than an afterthought add on, just tell us that it'll be added on in a few months or a year, when it's done.
bought it at launch as well, but it felt like a online version of Sid Meier's Pirates!
With the exception of the ship game, felt like a bad version. I never played the new SMPirates, just the ancient Pirates. This is one of those games whose company should've allowed it to follow CCP's footsteps. In a game that will admittedly be niche from the beginning, start small, but solid. Only focus on the main features, and don't add half-assed features. Ground combat with pirates? That should be something damned fun.
well i have to say im kinda annoyed, games converting like this are giving F2P games a bad rep -_-. P2P should stay P2P, F2P should stay F2P, never touched a P2P game in my life, probably wont touch these converts eather.
Meh, there's a few that turned out acceptable to very good. DDO is well suited for the modular hybrid model. LotRO is acceptable, and I like...most of the way their restrictions worked. EQ2X I didn't care for. Anarchy Online looks to be a great conversion. The original game and the first expansion for free, then sub at the point you want the later content.
It's the trend, Turbine turned DDO into a money making machine, will it work for everyone, who knows, but I really don't care what these companies do, but lots of people will play anything when you throw FREE in the title, and the game is indeed free, you can plat what they offer for free as long as you want, but if you want to move out of that you pay, really its not bad you only pay for what you want or you don't pay at all.. kinda like going to the mall, I can walk around the mall all day every day free, but if I want something from one of the stores I gota pay... I beta tested this game, did not like it then and free is not going to make me like it now.. but it will pick up some subs, a hit who knows.. .shrug
Another title trying to ride the coat tails of Anet. GW is and will alwasy be F2P..so will GW2. The big difference is...while theyhave an online store you can buy character renames, appearance change,extra storage...NONE of that stuff is needed to play the game..You odnt have potions and buffs that are only obtained through real money.
This is just another company trying to get in on the bandwagon cuas they know their games are going under when GW2 and SW:ToR go live...those will be the best F2P and subscription out there
I guess you failed to read the part where PotBS is actually going to be 99% free. You can play the entire game and 99% of the PVE mission content for free. There will be some items added into the store such as new clothing items, epic pve quest chains.
But as far as the base content goes everything else is going to be free. You can full out go from level 1 upto cap, gain access to all pve content (except the epic quest lines), you get 2 character slots and the standard number of ship slots.
If you want additional ship or character slots you can purchase them with there coin system (coins can be traded from player to play ingame and even bought from other players via ingame currency (just like PLEX in Eve Online).
If you have ever purchased the game in the past and have a retail / digital cdkey on your account then EVERYTHING is unlocked to you just as if you where subscribing to the game (you gain additional character and ship slots, access to the epic quest lines).
I don't think they are trying to hide from anything. The people that play and enjoy PoTBS is an entirely different bunch of people then people that would play GW2 or SWTOR.
All these subscription games are moving to "F2P" because in the long run they will make more money out of people via this business model than by subscriptions. It's pretty simple to figure out.
All these subscription games are moving to "F2P" because in the long run they will make more money out of people via this business model than by subscriptions. It's pretty simple to figure out.
Just as likely, they'd either have closed had they not made more revenue, or, that revenue was so low to begin with, that going F2P was a very low risk proposition.
Plus, the games that really stink, and try to go F2P, will not see this save them. The mediocre and sub-par games have something of a chance. If anything, it is creating a new sub-class of MMO: those not good enough to be/remain P2P, but better than the typical crap F2P coming out of Asia on any given week.
If these games could have continued to retain the numbers while staying P2P, they would have.
All these subscription games are moving to "F2P" because in the long run they will make more money out of people via this business model than by subscriptions. It's pretty simple to figure out.
Just as likely, they'd either have closed had they not made more revenue, or, that revenue was so low to begin with, that going F2P was a very low risk proposition.
Plus, the games that really stink, and try to go F2P, will not see this save them. The mediocre and sub-par games have something of a chance. If anything, it is creating a new sub-class of MMO: those not good enough to be/remain P2P, but better than the typical crap F2P coming out of Asia on any given week.
If these games could have continued to retain the numbers while staying P2P, they would have.
Thats not entirely true. LOTRO maintained over 250k+ subscriptions and still had atleast that many when it made the switch to the new hybrid model.
The thing is that this is just opening up more options and allowing more potential players to try the game before buying into it. Both DDO and LOTRO still have subscription offers that give you everything you would have got if the game would have maintained a P2P model. It is just now the players themselfs have more options to pick from. In the end it doesn't cost the player more then paying a monthly subscription does / would, just not the options are in your hands instead of being a one or nothing.
Is it smart business to give your players more options and to open the game up to 100x more people? Of course it is. As your can see from both DDO and LOTRO there are atleast double / triple the number of people now playing said games then there was before. It's like advertising during the super bowl or during a mid week tv show. Of course your going to advertise durning the super bowl if its a option. You have generally 100x more potential people seeing the ads then some random mid week tv show.
That maybe so with LOTRO, although their numbers had come WAY down from peak play (700k or more by some estimates), but it certainly was not the case with DDO.
Estimates put sub numbers for that game at 3-7k at the end before going F2P.
I will however grant that DDO's implementation of F2P is at the least objectionable end of the scale for F2P.
There is another thing to be considered when discussing both of these games and being "F2P": neither game was developed with F2P in mind, they were designed to be full feature "AAA" MMOs from go. The point being, that the quality and features expected in a "good" MMO were all in there. Compared to a lot of F2P crap coming out of Asia, this is an important difference. Had "F2P" been the plan, I seriously doubt LOTRO and DDO would have been developed to the point they were. And most of this is beside the point.
In the case of PoTBS, I suspect the choice was: 1. Do something radical to the pricing model in order to try to attract customers, or 2. Close down. PoTBS suffered from a number of poor design decisions and game mechaincs and people quit or did not buy in the first place. PoTBS is down to what? 2 Servers from 12?
PoTBS is facing the same situation as DDO: staggeringly low population.
We will see if their F2P implementaion will pull them out of the ditch, as it did for DDO. (Personally I am doubtful on the chances, at least DDO had a solid IP to fall back on).
That maybe so with LOTRO, although their numbers had come WAY down from peak play (700k or more by some estimates), but it certainly was not the case with DDO.
Estimates put sub numbers for that game at 3-7k at the end before going F2P.
I will however grant that DDO's implementation of F2P is at the least objectionable end of the scale for F2P.
There is another thing to be considered when discussing both of these games and being "F2P": neither game was developed with F2P in mind, they were designed to be full feature "AAA" MMOs from go. The point being, that the quality and features expected in a "good" MMO were all in there. Compared to a lot of F2P crap coming out of Asia, this is an important difference. Had "F2P" been the plan, I seriously doubt LOTRO and DDO would have been developed to the point they were. And most of this is beside the point.
In the case of PoTBS, I suspect the choice was: 1. Do something radical to the pricing model in order to try to attract customers, or 2. Close down. PoTBS suffered from a number of poor design decisions and game mechaincs and people quit or did not buy in the first place. PoTBS is down to what? 2 Servers from 12?
PoTBS is facing the same situation as DDO: staggeringly low population.
We will see if their F2P implementaion will pull them out of the ditch, as it did for DDO. (Personally I am doubtful on the chances, at least DDO had a solid IP to fall back on).
I agree with the F2P crap coming out of Asia and other parts of the world. That is indeed the bottom end / most of the F2P model. I don't like to call LOTRO / DDO / POTBS model F2P. It needs to be called something else and more along the lines of Hybrid or something like that.
PoTBS could very well be in a situation where its do something or die. I kind of doubt that is the case since Vanguard and PlanetSide both have subscriptions numbers less / on par with PoTBS and they are all still up and running without any notice of a immediate change. They all fit within the station pass subscription and anything SOE can do to rippen up that pull / setup is a plus to them even if it requires keeping a bunch of lower pop games around.
I tend to look at it from a point that if this can increase there population and possibly bring more money in for them all the while maintaining there current population then this can not be a bad thing for them? I much more like PoTBS model as it fits in with the Hybrid idea. However its much more of a true F2P model then any other game out there. Atleast from the information they have released so far (it could possibly change but I kind of doubt it).
I like to hope that PoTBS will pull out and bring in some more numbers. But as long as its enough to keep the company afloat and SOE happy then its enough. PoTBS is very much a nich game and will never have numbers in the 100k+. It's like Eve Online and Perpetuum targeted at very specific people that enjoy that type of game over other options out there.
Comments
Another title trying to ride the coat tails of Anet. GW is and will alwasy be F2P..so will GW2. The big difference is...while theyhave an online store you can buy character renames, appearance change,extra storage...NONE of that stuff is needed to play the game..You odnt have potions and buffs that are only obtained through real money.
This is just another company trying to get in on the bandwagon cuas they know their games are going under when GW2 and SW:ToR go live...those will be the best F2P and subscription out there
Nifty. Another game that I wanted to play again for a bit, but didn't want to pay a sub is going F2P/hybrid. Hope it's a slightly better system than EQ2X. Here's hoping that Everquest goes hybrid, soon....although I'm not sure what they would do on the hybrid side of things.
I bought PotBS for $50 when it came out, and didn't resub. Some of it was fun, but the ground combat was so bad that I didn't go back. I heard they polished it up a bit, but if a feature like that doesn't feel any better than an afterthought add on, just tell us that it'll be added on in a few months or a year, when it's done.
bought it at launch as well, but it felt like a online version of Sid Meier's Pirates!
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
well i have to say im kinda annoyed, games converting like this are giving F2P games a bad rep -_-. P2P should stay P2P, F2P should stay F2P, never touched a P2P game in my life, probably wont touch these converts eather.
With the exception of the ship game, felt like a bad version. I never played the new SMPirates, just the ancient Pirates. This is one of those games whose company should've allowed it to follow CCP's footsteps. In a game that will admittedly be niche from the beginning, start small, but solid. Only focus on the main features, and don't add half-assed features. Ground combat with pirates? That should be something damned fun.
Meh, there's a few that turned out acceptable to very good. DDO is well suited for the modular hybrid model. LotRO is acceptable, and I like...most of the way their restrictions worked. EQ2X I didn't care for. Anarchy Online looks to be a great conversion. The original game and the first expansion for free, then sub at the point you want the later content.
It's the trend, Turbine turned DDO into a money making machine, will it work for everyone, who knows, but I really don't care what these companies do, but lots of people will play anything when you throw FREE in the title, and the game is indeed free, you can plat what they offer for free as long as you want, but if you want to move out of that you pay, really its not bad you only pay for what you want or you don't pay at all.. kinda like going to the mall, I can walk around the mall all day every day free, but if I want something from one of the stores I gota pay... I beta tested this game, did not like it then and free is not going to make me like it now.. but it will pick up some subs, a hit who knows.. .shrug
I guess you failed to read the part where PotBS is actually going to be 99% free. You can play the entire game and 99% of the PVE mission content for free. There will be some items added into the store such as new clothing items, epic pve quest chains.
But as far as the base content goes everything else is going to be free. You can full out go from level 1 upto cap, gain access to all pve content (except the epic quest lines), you get 2 character slots and the standard number of ship slots.
If you want additional ship or character slots you can purchase them with there coin system (coins can be traded from player to play ingame and even bought from other players via ingame currency (just like PLEX in Eve Online).
If you have ever purchased the game in the past and have a retail / digital cdkey on your account then EVERYTHING is unlocked to you just as if you where subscribing to the game (you gain additional character and ship slots, access to the epic quest lines).
I don't think they are trying to hide from anything. The people that play and enjoy PoTBS is an entirely different bunch of people then people that would play GW2 or SWTOR.
All these subscription games are moving to "F2P" because in the long run they will make more money out of people via this business model than by subscriptions. It's pretty simple to figure out.
Just as likely, they'd either have closed had they not made more revenue, or, that revenue was so low to begin with, that going F2P was a very low risk proposition.
Plus, the games that really stink, and try to go F2P, will not see this save them. The mediocre and sub-par games have something of a chance. If anything, it is creating a new sub-class of MMO: those not good enough to be/remain P2P, but better than the typical crap F2P coming out of Asia on any given week.
If these games could have continued to retain the numbers while staying P2P, they would have.
Thats not entirely true. LOTRO maintained over 250k+ subscriptions and still had atleast that many when it made the switch to the new hybrid model.
The thing is that this is just opening up more options and allowing more potential players to try the game before buying into it. Both DDO and LOTRO still have subscription offers that give you everything you would have got if the game would have maintained a P2P model. It is just now the players themselfs have more options to pick from. In the end it doesn't cost the player more then paying a monthly subscription does / would, just not the options are in your hands instead of being a one or nothing.
Is it smart business to give your players more options and to open the game up to 100x more people? Of course it is. As your can see from both DDO and LOTRO there are atleast double / triple the number of people now playing said games then there was before. It's like advertising during the super bowl or during a mid week tv show. Of course your going to advertise durning the super bowl if its a option. You have generally 100x more potential people seeing the ads then some random mid week tv show.
That maybe so with LOTRO, although their numbers had come WAY down from peak play (700k or more by some estimates), but it certainly was not the case with DDO.
Estimates put sub numbers for that game at 3-7k at the end before going F2P.
I will however grant that DDO's implementation of F2P is at the least objectionable end of the scale for F2P.
There is another thing to be considered when discussing both of these games and being "F2P": neither game was developed with F2P in mind, they were designed to be full feature "AAA" MMOs from go. The point being, that the quality and features expected in a "good" MMO were all in there. Compared to a lot of F2P crap coming out of Asia, this is an important difference. Had "F2P" been the plan, I seriously doubt LOTRO and DDO would have been developed to the point they were. And most of this is beside the point.
In the case of PoTBS, I suspect the choice was: 1. Do something radical to the pricing model in order to try to attract customers, or 2. Close down. PoTBS suffered from a number of poor design decisions and game mechaincs and people quit or did not buy in the first place. PoTBS is down to what? 2 Servers from 12?
PoTBS is facing the same situation as DDO: staggeringly low population.
We will see if their F2P implementaion will pull them out of the ditch, as it did for DDO. (Personally I am doubtful on the chances, at least DDO had a solid IP to fall back on).
I agree with the F2P crap coming out of Asia and other parts of the world. That is indeed the bottom end / most of the F2P model. I don't like to call LOTRO / DDO / POTBS model F2P. It needs to be called something else and more along the lines of Hybrid or something like that.
PoTBS could very well be in a situation where its do something or die. I kind of doubt that is the case since Vanguard and PlanetSide both have subscriptions numbers less / on par with PoTBS and they are all still up and running without any notice of a immediate change. They all fit within the station pass subscription and anything SOE can do to rippen up that pull / setup is a plus to them even if it requires keeping a bunch of lower pop games around.
I tend to look at it from a point that if this can increase there population and possibly bring more money in for them all the while maintaining there current population then this can not be a bad thing for them? I much more like PoTBS model as it fits in with the Hybrid idea. However its much more of a true F2P model then any other game out there. Atleast from the information they have released so far (it could possibly change but I kind of doubt it).
I like to hope that PoTBS will pull out and bring in some more numbers. But as long as its enough to keep the company afloat and SOE happy then its enough. PoTBS is very much a nich game and will never have numbers in the 100k+. It's like Eve Online and Perpetuum targeted at very specific people that enjoy that type of game over other options out there.