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F2P the new fad or a certain death for MMO's
Injerin
Member Posts: 63
Just recently returned to the PC world. I love the MMO gendre and since there hasn't been many of my likeing lately I have been doing alot of reading on forums about the recent MMO status. I have noticed alot of games that I have played in the past are now F2P. I personally see alot wrong with this... I personally feel its like getting section 8 housing in your new sub-division. Anyway I just want to read comments on what others feel about this epidemic.
Comments
It seems pretty normal that when games can't make money anymore they go F2P.
The same thing happens with any other product, when it's outdated the price gets slashed.
It's price and demand, when demand goes down, so does price.
Games starting as F2P is another thing altogether, it's just the businessmodel they choose.
F2P is P2W, really ... and I think this is a drastic violation of what any game should be: Everyone should have equal chances and if there is one thing that really shouldnt matter, then its how much money you have in reallife.
It seems that there are 2 kinds of marketing strategies.
One, a p2p game turns out to be a f2p game because of its bad market performance
The other, a game is launched as f2p and try to generate money through virtual items in online shop.
which is better?
Indie game developer. Passion manifests itself in the games we create XD
what.. There are 3 options not 2.
option 3: Game is successful and stays P2P
Now which is better.. personally I would prefer a successful game that stays P2P
Games haven't really gone completely free to play, most big name subsciption mmos that went free to play still have a subsciption model behind it. They still maintain their subscribers as well as boosting the community with new players.
There are several other fully microtransaction pay-to-win models out there too of course but those are generally the games of poorer quality. Some gems stand out for me personally like Dragon Nest.
Summing it up, the free to play model doesn't take away from the exisiting subscription base it just allows more people to try it before investing money monthly into an mmorpg.
Play for fun. Play to win. Play for perfection. Play with friends. Play in another world. Why do you play?
Greed is something that threatens all genres, selling RMTs for loads of money to FPS and single player games is just wrong (getting some small adds on can easily cost twice the full games price).
With MMOs forcing players to buy the game, pay monthly fees and then sell extra content is the real threat here, not F2P except in MMOs with heavy PvP focus.
As I player I should be able to choose a game whose subscription model works for me, and I think a great game will earn money no matter how you pay for it, unless the devs gets too greedy.
But being a MMO player cost me about the same the entire 2000 until 2009 or so, when they suddenly started to sell loads of extra crap that you only can get in game by paying for them. And I frankly think that is pretty greedy, while a MMO isn't exactly that expensive each hour I just don't think it is fair, I pay my subscription fee to get access to the game, and with that I mean the entire game.
The reason so many players go over to F2P is that almost all MMOs charge you for extra content so why bother paying monthly fees and box prices?
And the P2P games seems to update what they sell. First it was a few cosmetic items and minipets, now it is mounts and in some games XP pots, in the future it will most likely be items as well.
That means that people who are fine with RMT shops often move to F2P while people who hate them often quit the genre as whole since there is Vanguard and a few other small games that are the only ones today not selling stuff.
F2P games really started to grow in the west about the same time as first EQ2 and then Wow started selling stuff, I don't think that is a coincident.
This is an excellent point, SoE and Funcom don't actually have F2P, they have a mockup F2P system in place where you can only access part of the content and need a subscription to see more.
They shouldn't be called F2P.
Yeah, but if you think about it, the only games that are really F2P is browser games living on banners.
When you get to a certain point in any F2P game they just ain't free anymore which of course makes sense since all studios needs to get in money. F2P sounds like someone actually is giving stuff away, and santa just don't exist.
They should be called RMT games instead.
To an extent, I have to agree that the term F2P is being overused and abused. Many of the games being called F2P, are actually Freemium games - sub games with a F2P option and the addition of a cash shop. Heck, I still find it funny that people refer to GW and GW2 as F2P when they are B2P.
I've dropped some Freemium games from my game rotations because of the NGE that came about with their conversions.
I have less of a problem with games being called Freemium than I do F2P. I'm not sure that RMT works, because generally speaking - any game involves some form of RMT (buying it, subscribing, etc).
I tried calling them APM (alternate payment methods) for a little while, but that did not really work either - since that could simply mean Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, GTC, etc, etc...lol.
MSN has free online games - some are just trials - some are limited - etc, and they also have games you can buy, subscriptions, etc. The "free" games though, are generally supported by ad revenue from third parties. You're not paying to play a free game like you are with F2P.
Extended Trials... even that does not really fit the model for some of the games out there.
Regardless though, it's not really a new fad - so to speak. "Free" as a pricing tool goes way back...way back in time. Chris Anderson's book on it is pretty good.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
The biggest benefit for adding a freemium model is that it provides extra players for the paying subscribers. That is content that developers cannot create. MMO's feel a lot better with hundreds of people running around versus logging in and only seeing 10 strangers here and there.
I personally like there is an option for me to play a game for no cost. I play MMO's that are sorta freeish and haven't inveested a dime in the cash shop. If I ever get serious about playing for a month, then I drop $15 for that month. I'm hoping more games adopt this model in the future. Well, actually I just hope Everquest adds a free tier. The rest I could care less about.