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Worst Free-to-Play Plan on a MMO
pupurun
Member UncommonPosts: 561
Simple choice and always a matter of personal opinion of course. Whether it's because of Pay to Win tactics or because it's limiting gameplay you can express your opinion here and even justify it.
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i enjoyed DDO and i appreciate that players can grind for Turbine points but i still find the free content very limiting
once you get to level 12 the majority of the game content is paid access or a long grind to earn turbine points
EQ2 fan sites
Funny, I thought of Wizard 101 first as well. You have that little starter type area then locked gates keeping you out of the rest of the game. Hate that style.
Oderint, dum metuant.
How in holy hell is LotRO losing to VANGUARD, the game with one of the most open FTP systems out there?
There's something sacriligious about breaking apart Middle Earth and selling them chunk by chunk, and then selling quests on top of that.
Vanguard I can play the entire game, every piece of content, every quest, every dungeon, to level 55, for FREE.
I can't do that in LotRO, or almost any other FTP game.
2 companies that have damaged the MMO genre more than any others are Activision and Turbine. Activision for destryoying the Meta-Games in exchange for ease of leveling and the age of entitlement into MMOs. And Turbine for destroying the idea of paying for equal opportunity.
Blizzard didn't just kill meta game, they killed MMOPGs in general. Its all casual soloing and small scale raids now.
But yes, Turbine's awful FTP system.... even if you subscribe you don't get access to all the stuff you used to before the FTP shift. Meanwhile, you can still sub to Vanguard and get everything you used to get.
And somehow VG is winning the poll. Pathetic.
I voted City of Heroes, as even with a sub you are strongly encouraged to buy stuff on top of the sub. I created a character the other month, on a sub, for he first time since it went F2P, and what I chose needed to be bought in the store. I could not be bothered to cnacel and redo, so used the points I accrued from the monthly sub Afterwards I realised that you could just show what is free, but on a sub it should all be free.
I like LOTRO and STO as you can earn points as you play, and STO has to be the best, as a lot of it can be played without paying a penny, and there is not many restrictions at all.
With LOTRO and especially STO, F2P generates more gameplay (or if you like grinding but still more fun than a boring job!) if you do not want to spend any real money. If you do not want to grind, then sub or buy points, but the game has to get money from somewhere.
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
I haven't experienced that myself in LOTRO. I sub and have not been limited.
The only thing that I have spent with my points is extra char slots and the riding skill on new characters that I do not have time to get to level 20 before the limited-tme mounts get stabled, and can not wait for them to come available again. They are not necessary purchases though.
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
Actually SOE, Turbine, Funcom and most other western publishers don't use F2P monetization. They use the Freemium model instead. There's a difference. Asian MMOs use F2P but put incentives in the game to use the cash shop. However the entire world is available to play in most Asian mmos to max level without using the cash shop if you really want to. You'll have to be a grind monkey to do it but it is possible.
Western publishers don't want those kind of users in their games so they went with the Freemium model instead. The Freemium game really is more of a time-unlimited account restricted DEMO but there are clear in-game limitations between the person who goes Freemium only vs one who pays a monthly sub.
My gripe is with companies that combine Freemium with cash shops too. To my mind it's the worst of both and while it's good for the company it diminishes value to all but that game's dedicated fandom.
Not sure about SOE on this score but I know for sure Turbine does this. I suspect if Turbine went with one or the other they might see their paying-userbase for LOTRO and D&D go up but apparently they themselves think that's not the case.
I remember reading an interview by the game director at Turbine a few years back right after D&D went Freemium plus cash shop and they saw their revenues shoot up. He talked excitedly about how they'd discovered this business model - Freemium (aka restricted demo for unlimited amount of time) plus the cash shop was viable.
They'd discovered this model lets them double-dip into the wallets of the "whales" among their userbase. The ones who not only pay a monthly sub but also spend on the cash shop too every month. It convinced him Freemium plus cash shops was the way to go for Turbine in the future and quite possibly for the industry as a whole.
I'd like to know how you can play every piece of Vanguard for free as I certainly can't build and enjoy my own house, which is why I wanted to play it. I can't wear certain kinds of gear or have enough cash to do many things without a sub.
And as for LOTRO, everything but access to PvP is available to F2P players. Yes, there is a grind for TP to do it, but it's been done.
Edit: I did reply to the poll being literal with F2P, meaning I could play the entire game without spending any real cash. The SOE games are very limited with caps on gear, currency, mail, housing that can only be removed by subscribing. In comparison, I prefer the Turbine model where I can remove those caps by grinding in-game currency and never have to spend a dime. This to me is a genuine F2P, but is obviously just my opinion.
Your opinion is your own but does this have to do more with the company running it or the specific payment structure?
IMO being able to play close an entire sub game for free is a pretty good deal. None of the restrictions are holding you back from the content available to you. Just my opinion.
Oh yeah, my mistake, I can spend 2 months grinding tokens to unlock one zone in LotRO, that means its much better than a game that doesn't lock any zones quests or dungeons at all, right?
And the restricted items are about 1/100th of the items that you'll encounter in the game, and you can unlock them for a quarter. 25 cents.
/agree Wizard 101 makes me sick and does not deserve the f2p title.
In order to compare pricing models you also have to compare game quality and the cost to develop. The asian market of F2P games that started the craze over here is not the same quality of game IMO as most listed in the poll. They are almost carbon copies of one another on similar engines but with different skins and topical gameplay. That method does not nearly cost the same amount as games developed from scratch with their own identity and deep content.
Absolute worst are P2W games like Allods and Runes of Magic.
Second worst are any F2P MMOs that don't give you free access to all quests to the release level cap. That's probably why LOTRO is in there. Sure you can grind the turbine points, but they should at least get you to Moria for free, preferably to ROI.
AoC and the soon to be F2P SWTOR basically want you to subscribe to get content. F2P is just to lure you in to try the game. These models generally fail miserably as word of mouth kept players away in the first place.
Even though it is a couple months away, I'd say SWTOR. Mainly because EA's freemium model will end up charging players to participate in a mostly single player game. A game that should have been B2P from the starting gate.
Another contender might be Runes of Magic. While it is free, if you want to be competitive and actually do stuff at end game in a quality guild, you need to spend a lot of money. $1,000 is not too far off for an estimate. You can trade your in-game currency for rubies on the cash shop, but to get that amount of gold, you would need years of dedication to RoM (or a nice bot).
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
I voted for F2P EQ2 but VG was bad too.
For a more fact and statistical driven poll there needs to be some sort of chart comparison. I haven't played F2P AOC and others to know the difference.
AoC
VG
DCU
EQ2
LotRO
Aion
CoH
STO
F2P EQ2 actually turned me away.
It wasn't F2P in any sort.
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Can we please (pretty please) select more than one option?
Generally, all $O games have an extremely bad Free2Play plan. It's more an extended trial somewhat forcing you into subscription later on. Dropping sub means a huge fallback in your character (gear/skill/storage wise).
Allods (and all other gPotato games) are Pay2Win and have NO SUBSCRIPTION OPTION AT ALL #FAIL on OP's side
Aion is only for EU players, where the veteran status (which you can obtain after only 1 month sub) is a very good deal. Aion US is fully Free2Play
CoH is soon dead, so disregard this one
Lord of the Rings online (as well as DDO) has a good system IMO where you can farm (real grind though) TP to buy the expansions. Or just buy them and they're fully available on the account. Other stuff is only available for one character.
I don't think Blizzard can take all the blame for this and I don't see the MMORPG market as dead. But... to Blizzard's credit they introduced a lot of players to the MMO genre and set the benchmark in many areras. Over the years I feel that WoW has lost it way more than a bit. However, rather than laying all the blame on what you hate about MMO's on their doorstep, you should look instead to every other game developer reaction to the success of WoW.