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some interesting stuff on how FTP is Play to Win
Attend4455
Member Posts: 161
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/194933/The_Top_F2P_Monetization_Tricks.php
The Top F2P Monetization Tricks
Coercive Monetization
A coercive monetization model depends on the ability to "trick" a person into making a purchase with incomplete information, or by hiding that information such that while it is technically available ...
Premium Currencies
To maximize the efficacy of a coercive monetization model, you must use a premium currency, ideally with the ability to purchase said currency in-app. Making the consumer exit the game to make a purchase gives the target's brain more time to figure out what you are up to, lowering your chances of a sale. If you can set up your game to allow "one button conversion", such as in many iOS games ...
Skill Games vs. Money Games
A game of skill is one where your ability to make sound decisions primarily determines your success. A money game is one where your ability to spend money is the primary determinant of your success. Consumers far prefer skill games to money games, for obvious reasons. A key skill in deploying a coercive monetization model is to disguise your money game as a skill game.
Reward Removal
This is my favorite coercive monetization technique, because it is just so powerful. The technique involves giving the player some really huge reward, that makes them really happy, and then threatening to take it away if they do not spend ...
Progress Gates
Progress gates can be used to tell a consumer that they will need to spend some amount of money if they want to go further in the game. If done transparently, this is not coercive. For the purposes of this paper, the focus will just be on how this can be layered to trick the consumer into spending on something they may not have if they had been provided with complete information ...
Soft and Hard Boosts
The purpose of a money game is to promote Boost sales. Boosts that have an instant one-time effect are "soft" Boosts. Those that stick around either forever or until they are converted to something else are "hard" Boosts. The $1 "un-defeat" button in PaD is a soft Boost, as are all of the power-ups sold in Candy Crush Saga. The obvious advantage of soft boosts is that you can keep selling them as long as the player stays in the money game ...
"Hard" Boosts include things like the random rare creatures that are sold in PaD for $5 each. Having these in your stable effectively lowers the difficulty of the game enough to allow you to get a little bit further with each purchase. A technique that is very popular in Asian games with hard Boosts (PaD included) is to ...
Ante Games
As described in detail in my How "Pay to Win" Workspaper, the key to these games is to start off with the appearance of a skill game and then shift to a multiplayer money game that I call an "Ante" game. The game could proceed as a skill game but never does since once one player spends enough money ...
I sometimes make spelling and grammar errors but I don't pretend it's because I'm using a phone
Comments
Great info, thanks. "F2P" is an intentionally deceptive business model that is costing the average player a lot of $, and is very much P2W. The falacy of whales footing most of the bill is just that; falacy. Anyone who doesn't believe me can do their own in-game poll to see how much their fellow gamers are spending.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
An interesting read, but predominantly unrelated to the MMORPGs discussed on this site; your references all stem from "casual" games that operate on Facebook or other social-media networks, consequently very little of the information you present is applicable when considering, for instance, the monetization practices used by Turbine in Lord of the Rings Online, the cash shop of Aion and how unique hosts of such employ it, the patron status perks of Rift and their effect on the game, the distinctions between Battlefield Play-for-Free and Battlefield 3 or any other major title... etc, etc, etc...
Again, it's a worthwhile read, but I'd sooner have seen you delve into the mechanics behind some true MMOs if you intend to post it for our consideration.
SaintGraye : I'm deeply interested in the mechanics behind MMOs. If you have amy suggestions on something challenging i would consider it. I usually check here once a day but feel free to PM me.
Best wishes/
I sometimes make spelling and grammar errors but I don't pretend it's because I'm using a phone
LOL No its not....
Doesn't " P2W " actually refer to " Pay to Win " not " Play to Win "?
I mean, don't we all usually play a game to win it, or at least succeed?
Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint.
I had to settle for slapping the back of my monitor seeing as your head is across the internet.
To find an intelligent person in a PUG is not that rare, but to find a PUG made up of "all" intelligent people is one of the rarest phenomenons in the known universe.
The analogy of the ANTE game only applies to PvP. It is a flawed argument if applied to PvE, because there is no winning. A free player can enjoy the free part of the game without ante-up anything.
Now the other monetization strategies like reward removal, and pay-gate still applies but those don't have as much power. Personally, i quit the game as soon as i see reward removal (pretty easy to spot) or a pay-gate.
so it's wrong to play pve competitively?
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
How? There is no winning. Either i kill the boss or not. I can't kill it "better" than you do. Why you can race .. i suppose .. most players don't bother to.
And once you do a race .. it is no longer pure PvE, but a form of PvP.
How? There is no winning. Either i kill the boss or not. I can't kill it "better" than you do. Why you can race .. i suppose .. most players don't bother to.
And once you do a race .. it is no longer pure PvE, but a form of PvP.
there are entire websites devoted to the competition between raid guilds. there is competition in pve for those that enjoy it. competitive raid guilds wouldn't play p2w unless they could afford to win. you are the first person in 10 or so years to call them pvpers outside of the times when they actually pvp.
wildstar promises to have better prizes for the fastest clears. or something to that effect .. not enough is really known at this time ... but it's out there. many people raid purely to be the best. being second isn't good enough. Im not one of those people, but again .. p2w does plenty to destroy pve.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Quick what does PvP stand for?
Those websites you mentioned are promoting pvp. . .
.
If you can't take the information he gave you and look at any of those games and figure out how they are doing it, then they are either doing a really good job, or you are their targeted audience.
Exactly. Once you start to race, it becomes pvp. So if you care about pvp .. sure . there is p2w.
If you just enjoy pve, there is no p2w. It is not even possible because there is no winning.
The pc platform takes the middleman out, it lets devs do what they want. Sometimes thats good and sometimes thats bad. In the end pc gaming is left with 2 year old console titles to play on thier uber advanced pc systems. The other titles though exclusive to pc come with a ton of baggage starting with the f2p culture.
Consoles charge an arm and a leg for thier games, they roll out the red carpet for you though and handle order and chaos. Im afraid with sony lets devs have more control f2p crap will become more mainstream there. I onky hope sony can riegn them in and say look unless you produce quality games, get off my platform. Microsoft started to jump the shark but sony put a saeet deeal out and cracked the wip on Microsoft. They are starting to see the light and I hope they do and I hope sony and microsoft ( the so called managers of my gaming experience) keep the devs inline enough not to let console vaming turn into cash grab festival of piss poor and half assed games like the pc world is experiencing right now.
I would have loved to keep my pc, but without a middleman like steam, origin, really enforcing quality and value, the pc world is very unattractive to say the least.
Reading comprehension is not your forte, is it? Try again, my condescending little friend, only this time, attempt to wrap your insipid mind around this: I was posting a critique of the work, nothing more.
Yes, and I am telling you that your critique (opinion) is wrong because of your assumption that the information does not apply to MMOs, since the author did not use any in his article. I suspect the reason that the author probably did not use any MMOs in his article is he does that kind of detailed analysis for a living, and I doubt the amount he made on that article would compensate what a publisher would pay.
Great read OP.
Thanks.
Free 2 play didn't cause the downfall of gaming advancements. WoW did, F2P simply looted the corpse. The massive success of WoW caused the market to become flooded with copycat games. When these WoW clones started losing money in droves they turned to Free 2 Play. There is no putting that genie back in the bottle now. A well made sandbox might be able to bring the subscription model back to life but that remains to be seen.
PS: Nobody here really cares about console gaming.
There really aren't that many legit "P2W" MMO's out there any more, not in the traditional sense. Developers have made sure they don't go down that path.
What we have instead is a bunch of "Pay to compete now" or "Pay for convenience"
They let you buy items from their stores with real life cash, and then put them on the Auction House/GTN/Merchant/whatever and sell them for in game currency, which in turn allows you to purchase most of the stronger to strongest items in game. Sure, you can't buy anything better than the guy who invested his time has, but you can get whatever he has earned in game on the strength of your wallet.
Another practice that is becoming more common is where they begin to design the way to achieve specific in game items to be extremely time consuming. In turn, they put the item on the game store as well. Its designed explicitly to make you decide between spending a large amount of time in game (say, 5 hours) doing something that is generally accepted to be not fun to earn an item, or spending 1 hour at work to get the money to buy the items you need/want. The idea is to make the way to acquire them in game so time consuming that it makes more sense to spend 10 bucks than it does to spend 5+ hours grinding at it the legit way.
Its one of the reasons I am moving away from MMO's. The market is too saturated to support any real P2P MMO's and the F2P ones spend more time designing content around how to make money as opposed to designing engaging content.
OP: yes yes, we need more of these posts the equate "F2P" as the pure marketing strategy it is.
The greatest marketing ploy ever has been to convince those being marketed to are not being marketed to. Here on gaming forums too often it is all about getting to "play". While I understand that that is the point, I also see the transaction that takes place. Be it P.O.S., the transaction in the cash shop that you, I, or the other guy did that brought an item, boost, money, whatever into the game world, the subscription, it doesn't matter. It still is there and is the driving force behind the games themselves, like it or not.
The sooner consumers realize this, and educate themselves on what is being marketed to them, the better off they will be.
I do.
Like it. I don't really care the motives of the devs, if a particular game is fun to me, i will play it. If it is free (for some parts), even better.
Oh i know what is being marketed. The good news is that i am not a whale. They can try to get the whales as much as they want .. but it won't work on me. And if the by-product is fun for me, i will call that a win.
I guess its all a matter of opinion right? As opposed to fact (i.e. F2P *is* P2W). That argument will never hold up because its subjective to the gamer. I love raiding but I dont care about being the best. I care about downing the boss and surviving.
I still haven't seen a valid argument of how empirically F2P "destroys" PvE. When any of us play a game we have the ability to not play it if it suits us. Thats not destruction thats choice. I play plenty of F2P games that have P2W tags and it either doesn't exist or it happens around me and I don't see it. So its not a truth to me. Buying a XP boost is not P2W unless your goal in the game is to race to max level. Even if that was the case who are you competing against? The entire community? It just doesnt make sense. Now, if I am able to buy gear or weapons that are ONLY in the cash shop then that is literally paying-to-win because in that instance you cannot advance in the game without purchasing the gear that allows you to survive. This is 'poorly implemented' F2P. And guess what? I play those sometimes too. Once I find out that I have to buy something to continue I quit. This notion that companies 'trick' you into spending money is rediculous. If people are fooled or spend money without understanding what they are doing then they are effectively fools and deserve exactly what they got. Call stupidity what it is and dont blame the model which isnt even alive. If you cant stop spending money on a game then you shouldn't be playing in the first place.
I am an advocate of F2P but I am against BAD IMPLEMENTATIONS of F2P. There is a right way to do it.
Once your success in game is determined by your success outside of game, then PvE success stops being a measure of in game skill, effectively destroying PvE.
Its not always that cut and dry but that is the jist of it. My success in game should be influenced by two things - my ability and my time invested. Once either is compromised by cash, then there is little reason to continue.