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Anyone starting to think FTP is gonna be the end of it.
ChloroCat
Member Posts: 98
in Neverwinter
I've started to think that FTP will be the end of us old time mmo gamers. Look at the crap that has been released in the last year or so. The bugs..the hacking..the complete collapse of markets. If we want mmo's that are worth playing...we are gonna have to want it to be a sub based game simple as that.
People think that game developers want to work for peanuts ??? The best games are sub. It's sad that most gamers today want it to be ftp. All I can say is Thx for....nothing. ....and get a job.
Jymm Byuu
Playing : Blood Bowl. Waiting for 2. Holding breath for Archeage and EQN.
Comments
Are you sure that best games are for subs? like it or not but decision to stay P2P doesn't depend upon the companies but consumers.
When people don't want to pay monthly sub anymore and support the game then companies have to either go F2P or B2P. The only other option is to make a very small budget indie MMO and try to stay content with 50K player base on P2P model but we know even then people complain because small budget indie titles are not good enough and lack quality.
People want AAA quality MMOS too and don't want to pay monthly sub either..sorry but you can not have it both ways.
To not say anything of that fact that it's more often than not the P2P devs these days which are working for peanuts unless they have a really solid game and aren't derping hard (pretty much only EVE-Online falls into that category from within the western market).
1 word: Monocle-gate
They tried to get away with it and go down the dark path. Only sheer outrage kept it from getting worse. Those memo's were a clear indication of where they wanted to head.
How 'old' of an 'old time gamer' are you?
The bugs:
Subscription examples:
Wow's Oracle Database mail and loot lag disaster
SWG's two day Oracle Database fiasco
and the all time winner, Anarchy Online release day BUGNANZA!
The hacking:
Jumpgate massive mission exploit wrecks their economy.
APB's massive exploit fest.
EVE exploit nets user 2.5 - 3 Trillion (That's a 'T') ISK.
The loss of markets:
SWG lauded with one of the best economies, ever... inflated to millions of credits for nearly anything useful. Doctor buffs were thousands of credits for the most low level shortest lasting (We can almost buy our own ship for that!)
Jumpgate gets double billing here due to hacks and wrecked economies often being linked and theirs certainly was.
Looks like subscriptions aren't your holy grail after all... if you were really an 'old time gamer' you would have already known that.
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire:
Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.
Sure, nobody in their right mind would try to claim that P2P MMO's were bug free, lol
But at least those bugs and exploits were happening in games that I valued and considered to be "quality productions". I certainly would not rate any of PWE's stable of F2P titles as quality productions.
Most "made-for-F2P" games are very average in depth, quality and gameplay. That cannot be anything but average, given that they are generally made in record time and with low budgets.
But they ARE free to play...
You get what you pay for, after all.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
P2P is the only way to do the subscription-free model. There has to be a barrier to entry to keep the fraud out.
I like the GW2, Defiance models. Buying the game should give you complete access to everything. If you want special items, you can pay your "subscription" (i.e. cash shop).
Neverwinter (and other F2P games) is too tightly wound around squeezing money out of you. I don't want to have to think about what features I want to pay money for. The only content decision I should have to make is whether I buy the game or not.
http://f.cl.ly/items/3n15423i0G2i111y3c2b/computer.gif
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
You're not that old or you would know of the bugs, problems and massive exploits in EQ and AC. And Turbine never banned exploiters because they believed in empowering cheaters...correction...didn't punish cheaters for their own development mistakes. Which, by the way, was the biggest pile of bull$hit ever. SOE, on the other hand, wielded the mighty banhammer with exquisite style...correction...held people accountable for their bad choices that impact the entire game community.
I don't have a personal hate for F2P games, and in fact, enjoy some from time to time. Once things become "required" to pay, then I usually bail. But overall, the genre is not as bad as some seem to make it out to be. Of course, this really depends upon the publisher. EA is a good example of where F2P, just isn't F2P.
NWO technically can be played for free until top level; as far as a leveling experience, nothing is really truly required (unless you mean a fancy 110% mount, which is really preference, not required). In fact, spending money at lower levels really is a waste of cash, since you will get better in an hour, anyways, or have to spend AD to remove a great enchant from a crappy piece of gear. End-game, when enchantments, companions and runes figure heavily into your effectiveness, however, that's where it does become necessary to shell out some cash. Unless you want to spend 4-6 months grinding for those AD that you can convert. Realistically, for anyone earning over $10 an hour, it's just easier to buy $40 in Zen, because it's not a fun grind.
As far as Cryptic's fairly poor development practices, those are pretty well-known. CoH was about the only game (until ED) where they actually did something right. CO, STO (and now NWO) all had major issues at launch, or they went the route they did with ED in CoH and just totally tore apart the existing mechanics because... well, they just don't work. They tend to quickie the development process, offer very little insight into the mechanics themselves, and do as many short cuts as possible. These result in Klingongate, Caturdays and Drowgates left right and center.
This is not to say that other developers are any better than Cryptic. Cryptic actually set out to make a fun action combat system. This, they did accomplish (personal preferences aside, it is well done). It's just connected to poor or broken mechanics (case in point, about 30% of the feats and abilities for the control wizard do not work correctly as stated in tooltips).
I think this F2P offering may be worth playing in 6-8 months, but not before they actually get most of the code working which was supposed to be working at launch. Problem is, Cryptic also tends to leave bugs in, then nerf things which are "OP", then bugfix the code which wasn't working after that. Resulting in more knee-jerk nerfs. So, it's really an up-in-the-air when this whole cycle will settle down into a somewhat sane pattern.
F2P isn't really the problem. The problem is nobody is releasing a game with any longevity or is worth playing. This is coming from someone that refuses to play a F2P game.
All the games that released P2P and went F2P had their share of problems. They went F2P because apparently there's something within that model that allows them to make more money since the barrier of entry has been removed.
If WoW was released today even in its' entirety it would be f2p in 3 months.
Why is it still such a big deal?
I have to disagree with you, the decision of a a game going P2P does not depend on the consumer at all. When a company are losing customer, they have to go F2P, they have blame the consumer? This is pretty ridiculous if you think about it. The company first have to think of why they are running out of customer. The reason is pretty obvious when F2P game have much higher quality game then Sub-based game. Which cause gamer to move to F2P community. If a company's game is is good enough people will happily pay for it every month, but when F2P game is doing better than you with out any fee at all. Of course people will go to F2P game. It's not the gamer that cause this kind of situation to happen, it is the company that are slacking off and refuse to do better. If a company want the people's money, they have to work for it, show the people that they care.
At least in sub based games I can enjoy the game without constantly having the feeling of the game trying to take me for every cent I have.
What you want more bag space... 6 bucks!
What you want more space for your guild bank......6 bucks!
What! you want to respec because the description alone isn't enough to let you know it you like that skill or not.......6 BUCKS!
Oh and we only sell currency we use to buy stuff in game by amounts of 5 so you have to spend 10 bucks to get anything that cost 6...........see what we did there!
The Brave Do Not Fear The Grave
Ha. The joke in Lord of the Rings Online when they went to Free-to-Suck was "Increase your Ignore List capacity. Only 75 Turbine Points!"
So your entire argument against free to play is that you don't like it?
Age of Conan was a quality production? higher than GW2? Tortage... maybe, the rest of the game, no way.
There is nothing intrinsically better about the production values of a P2P over a B2P or F2P. The best way to prove that is you can make a game based on backer funding and NOT EVEN DECIDE its business model until the last few months.
So how can a decision you made about the game in the last few months alter the quality of the work done in the preceding three years?
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire:
Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.
A funnier joke is that you didn't take the time to find the REASON turbine added that...
the players ASKED for it.
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?413885-Friend-Ignore-List-Increase-per-Character-Slot
Ha.
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire:
Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.
F2P is a symptom, not a cause.
The cause is that a whole generation doesn't think it needs to pay for entertainment.
This has consequences for music and computer games.
Talking MMOs, people want VERY good stuff, expencive as f**k, and massive updates every week. They want a huge active CS. They want developers to spend time communicating with the players.
They don't want to pay $. They may be persuaded to buy the actual game, but then they expect to play it for free for as long as they want to. Cash shop is shunned, it's called P2W rather than P2D (pay to develop). Sub is all out. Forget about it.