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My Last "FTP" PTW Game
gatheris
Member UncommonPosts: 1,016
in Neverwinter
Every area of this game pushes you to buy "zen" - not surprisingly
and i have been buying the equivalent of a sub for this game but this is not enough for even moderate progression - most recent example is 300,000 diamonds just to get my standard pet past level 15
now i've hit the wall
while focusing on the leadership profession over all others i've found that at level 15 you "must" buy profession packs to get assets needed to get the adventurer - since it is a random drop this is just not gonna happen
ah well, a little more space has been freed up on the SSD
Comments
The industry went away from subscription models and toward FTP because the profit potential is much higher.
GW2 is a master of this. They have their new event running, and everyone wants to run it to get the latest skins and blah blah (skins are basically endgame in that game, making your char look unique), so they made the dungeon ridiculously hard, and then they sell a coin for gems (which you buy with RL cash) called the 'infinite coin' which makes a lot of players want to buy it to ease the grind to get through the event. TL;DR, the people who buy that coin will get the items quicker. https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/livingworld/sab-bts/IMO-Pay-to-Win/first
It's off-putting for me the reality that the industry is firmly settled in this type of cash-milking model. It's just not enjoyable anymore, and it makes sense that Blizzard took a step back with Titan to really rethink how they want to play their hand with their next MMO in this very jaded and tired market. Maybe they're hoping Oculus Rift will help spin them in a unique direction if they integrate that well.
I know when I'm bored of these games though, and I'm bored. I took a year break, and just came back to GW2 for a week, and it still can't keep my attention. I still feel like just another spoiled-by-SWG-pre-cu-sandbox whiner, and I'd rather not whine, so I won't post here anymore.
I have repeated this until I'm blue in the face. People that like F2P games are:
Kids (well duh because they can download and start playing with buying anything)
People with no income (same reason as kids)
People that don't play that often and don't care about min maxing (I call these people tire kickers)
People that cant stick with anything very long do to some sort of A.D.D. condition (they can bounce around to 5 different MMO's a day)
People that will spend a 100 bucks a month to have a high end character that's only obtainable with cash (P2P players).
People who don't like F2P games are:
Non A.D.D hardcore gamers with a modest amount of disposable income.
We used to make up the majority of MMO players so subs worked great. Once the market opened up to the player types I mention above F2P games had a footing.
There is simply no comparison in value between paying 15 a month and having access to all the content and items in a game for all your characters. Or trying to acquire everything the game has via a cash shop for all characters in the same amount of time.
This person lives in my house and expects alot out of the game and complains to me about it, lol. People like this expect others to support what they consider is their game and then complain about why people that pay can beat them with OP gear, it is a vicious sickening cycle.
I've personally picked P2P from here onward as:
A.) I don't want to play a game that is unbalanced where I OP people.
B.) I don't want to play a game where I pay so others can play free and I get nothing substantial in return for supporting them other than a middle finger salute. (example: I buy a $50 mount, F2P player says how i'm an idiot and noob for paying $50 for a mount.)
It's a lose, lose situation. P2P for me.
Congratulations, OP.
And don't worry about the money and time lost to these shady F2P games. Just focus on the fact that you're moving onto a better gaming experience.
Well said sir!
And you'll still be wrong.
I should say I much prefer a monthly sub but think I am in a minority at this point..
With that said, really nothing wrong with a FTP model if it makes sense. LOTRO and Rift come to mind and I feel they are generally fair in the approach. I don't expect FTP to be "free" and don't mind paying for some content if I feel I am getting a good value.
Here's where Neverwinter falls down. It isn't a good value at all and since the expansion has gotten worse with the constant in your face cash shop, crazy chest drops and just overt attempts to part you from your cash... The dungeons have been deliberately tuned to require potions, scrolls, etc. I am expecting billboard next in the dungeons.."Need a scroll? Now available in the cash shop..."
Add to this a variety of bugs and a poor game performance and you have the current state of the game which is simply - not fun..
At this point my entire guild has left to play Tera together. We thought we would take another look and are glad we did. We're having a blast and don't feel ripped off...
Seaspite
Playing ESO on my X-Box
So let me guess, you play a P2P game that has a cash shop.
I like both p2p & f2p but i prefer p2p. I tend to have more restrictions when it comes to f2p games, those being a cash shop with fluff items only. If it has game breaking items in the cash shop then i won't play it.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
+1
It's sad that there seem to be very few of us left that expect to get value for our money, not fluff & the runaround.
+1 I think you pretty much nailed it. I have been saying/thinking similar things. I know people who LOVE the NW pay model and they pretty much fit the bill. They hardly ever played the game so the shortcomings barely come into play or don't matter. The resulting "community" of people this type of game attracts is not conducive to a typical MMO community with strong guilds, strong ties to other players or character/guild progression which is something unfamiliar to what most traditional MMO players expect. It's more like a massivly multiplayer browser game or something.
You are correct. This game would not have been worth a subscription and honestly would have had to be built completely different to support a sub. That being said..maybe had they designed it to be a good game that people wanted to pay for rather than a game that was good at milking your pay it would have been different.
As it stands this game is trash and I'm a bit embarrassed that I spent money on this game. I was lulled into it by the gameplay leveling up and thought I wanted to support the game but quickly realized at max level that this is like a cardboard cutout of an MMO. If this is the direction the genre is going it's going down the toilet. That being said I'm somewhat heartened that FFXIVARR and ESO are not going down this path. I hope they do well to at least keep the subscription model as a viable option.
Woah, really? The new FFXIV isn't like this at end game? What?
We must be playing completely different games or something. I do, however, agree on the ESO part ( in the beta ).
Not sure I understand what you mean. FFXIV is a subscription game not F2P.
You can say it as often as you want. It just shows you're totally ignorant about that side of the market. Your last statement is proof you don't really know anything about f2p players motivations you just want them to be like that so you feel better about yourself.
I think your statement shows the reverse about you. What about those statements are untrue exactly? The very nature of a FTP model is that the more content you consume the more you will have to buy a la carte (in some form). Any hardcore player or person who wants to consume all the content would benefit from a subscription that gives ALL content for one modest price. You do realize that buying content piecemeal will always cost more which is the fallacy of these FTP games. Unless, of course you are one of those people who actually thinks multi-million dollar FTP MMOs actually means "free" with no strings attached.
heh as far as gameplay from what little I've seen yea it prob isn't worth any payment model. As far as FTP games in general however, I don't consider them the font of all evil but they do carry significant design traps.
The biggest trap imho is extracted value vs resources input
In a sub game if upstairs yells down and says we need more $ well you pretty much have to add some sort of value to the game to draw in more subs
In a f2p game upstairs yells down and says we need more store sales you can easily tweak grind to "coerce" more sales or through some other avenue. While not actually adding value to the game; if done in moderation it can be tolerable to your player base as long as they still feel they get value from the content worth the cost. But it is extremely easy to overreach and fall into the trap of slash and burn full value extraction.
The possibility of the universe collapsing into a singularity is higher than the birth of a perfect MMORPG.